The Ur-post

One thing I’ve been wondering about (in all my musings on #microblogging) is the relationships among sources and references. Earlier, I speculated that all blogging is only reference, because an #rss feed is just a sign to a #blog post.

Interestingly, it’s a robust sign. Some feeds are so robust that they are copies of their source. There is no need to “click through” to the source, because the same information is in the feed.

Even if feeds are referrers, to what do they refer? The refer to sources.

Some sources are copies of other sources. Once a source item is copied, there’s no need to trace the feed back. A copy is just as good.

But what if there are no copies? And what if the feeds are not copies, either? Then the feeds just point back. They point back, even through many feeds, to the source. If content is not replicated, then there is always one source.

I call this the ur-post.