I really hate the way that information is trending into an increasingly vaporous format. As I recently shared from “The Future of Text”, our content is disappearing at an alarming rate. Most of what we publish is on platforms that don’t have a good way to export it and are fairly unlikely to exist in 20 years.
In “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant“, author Eric Jorgenson (who collected and published the thoughts of Ravikant) explained why books are so important:
“I created this book as a public service. Tweets, podcasts, and interviews quickly get buried and lost. Knowledge this valuable deserves a more permanent, accessible format. That is my mission with this book.”
I have early pieces of a book in progress, and I have increasing admiration for those that have gone through the full process of publishing one. I keep this blog because I know it will likely outlive the social platforms that we all use today, but a book will almost certainly far outlive this blog.
If you have valuable knowledge to share, social media should merely be a way to promote and discuss it, and not be the primary source. If you have the means to publish a self-hosted blog like this, I strongly encourage you to do it. Even better, though, do the world a favor by giving the gift of a public service — a book.
