Could this entire column consist simply of a link to that nine year old column? Perhaps to a certain extent the answer is yes – but that in itself raises some interesting questions. Has nothing changed since then – a “then” that’s from before the smartphone with its always available camera? Today, when tools like Snapchat seem to purposefully compel us to view passing events as unworthy of being retained permanently in (at least a digital) memory, can we still relate to the saved memories of photographs as we might have a decade ago? The almost total domination of the digital world on its physical predecessor seems to inevitably cause a backlash in which we rebel against having our every moment catalogued. And yet, when I reread that old column I find that I still agree with it, or at least still identify with the point I was trying to make (if it really had a "point").

But could I write that same column today? Were I to change the date to make it appear that it was written now rather than nine years ago, would it be as convincing (or unconvincing) now as it was then? Would it still represent me? Jorge Luis Borges's Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is, I suppose, the best example (it turns out there are others) of an attempt at an examination of that question. In Borges's story Menard "writes", word-for-word, parts of Cervantes's classic, and Borges "examines" the ways in which this "version", by virtue of the fact that it was written in a totally different cultural milieu, has achieved a significantly different meaning. Even if substantial parts of that previous column might still ring true, the very act of posting them today as written then would present my digital entity in a considerably different light.