Okaz

I wish our educational institutions would work with students to develop the culture of blogging. I have tried with my children but have not succeeded completely because this culture is not widely spread in our society.

Today we are losing the history of very important experiences and events because it is locked in our minds and is not recorded for future generations. The information of those who had important personal experiences or who lived through an important period of history will die forever once they are gone.

In the West, we see in movies and TV serials, especially the ones about crime, how detectives dig through the daily diaries of a victim, especially the last pages, hoping that they can find between the lines, in appointments, telephone numbers and names, clues that will help them solve the crime.

This indicates that in Western societies, the culture of writing is widely spread; the culture of writing about what is inside their minds and hearts is a way of life, even it is only random and simple writing.

I know that writing on paper is dying out and the recording of events is slowly shifting to digital writings, such as electronic blogs and other social media platforms. However, personal diaries, biographies and the accumulation of knowledge are generating a wealth of knowledge. It is documenting the activity of a community, and sadly this does not exist in our society.

In Saudi society, as in the Arab world, we do not see people documenting their lifestyle on personal blogs, although the art of writing blogs is widely spread in both the East and West.

I once sat next to a foreigner who was busy typing on his laptop. I was curious about what he was writing and I asked him. He told me that he was a lifestyle blogger and that he wrote about travel, markets, food and drinks and that he loved to pass on his experiences to others.