Category: Random Thoughts

The Impermanence of the Digital

Published on by shantelgbuggs

I only recently discovered that a critical blog on race, ethnicity, and racism social science theory and research that I relied on during graduate school (to learn about new work and to share my own insights on recent events) appears to have gone defunct. While I did find my personal contributions using the Wayback Machine over at Internet Archive…I realize that there is going to be an increasing need for me to not only keep my own copies of whatever I submit to these outlets stored somewhere other than the “cloud”…but that I probably will need to use this blog to keep my public writing available for as long as I’m able.

I am thinking about all the writers who have had their digital footprint erased with the folding of various online outlets or who have no digital footprint whatsoever because their work was in print and never converted to digital.

I am thinking about how many thinkers become “unknown” when all the people who read their work are no longer around and they didn’t manage to build enough of a reputation that subsequent generations after them are still interested in their work or are assigned it in school. I am thinking about what it means to maintain our own archives and physical libraries.

With my maternal grandmother’s recent passing, my sisters and I have discovered a lot of “analog” (and some digital) detritus hidden or stored around her home — the many copies of receipts, bills, and important documents, printouts of news stories and recipes or pages cut from magazines, SO MANY MAGAZINES, scraps of images to reference for oil paintings, old VHS home videos from me and my siblings’ and cousins’ childhoods, hard copy photos and polaroids, and even CD-ROMs full of photos. I am hoping to pull these images off these discs to print hard copies that will last longer (yes, putting your data on discs or even hard drives isn’t a permanent solution). I’m trying not to stress myself out with thoughts of what my nieces and nephews or whoever ends up responsible for the detritus of my life will do with all of my physical and digital things. If keeping a record of my life and work will really matter all that much in the long arc of the universe.

Anyhow… my sabbatical seems like an ideal opportunity to figure how much of my writing needs to find a new place to live. It’s bittersweet but also a great reminder that we probably put too much trust in the internet being “forever.”

a hello, of sorts.

Published on by shantelgbuggs

I have done a lot of back and forth with myself over the years about whether blogging is something I can actually keep up with regularly. I’ve never been much of a diary writer (except for a brief time during my teenage years when there were just too many feelings to process). Haven’t been much of a letter writer, either. I have thoughts going through my head about all kinds of things, all day long, but rarely take the time to write them down (aside from tweets).

I have realized, though, that a centralized place might be a good way to get out some of my more “professional” thoughts on things that doesn’t necessarily require me to go on at length on Twitter and that don’t merit writing an op-ed for some outlet. I envision this being a space where I can reflect on things I’m learning from teaching or mentoring or something I watched or read. A place to unpack what bothers me and what (intellectually) excites me. A place for all the casual “sociologicalizing” that my mother hates. A place to do some writing simply for the enjoyment of writing instead of for the purpose of furthering my career and “making a contribution.”

I can’t promise that I will update this regularly. I also can’t promise that anything I write here will be any good. But I keep thinking about connection(s) and solitary-ness and being lost in my own head in the midst of finally having a break from teaching (and the other social responsibilities of this job) for the first time in nearly a decade, in the midst of a global pandemic. It is my hope that it might be easier to commit to the sage academic advice of “writing every day” if I don’t have to be writing something for publication. Maybe at the end of this sabbatical I’ll have established some better approaches to my writing… or maybe not.

So, let’s give this try.