When a blogger suddenly dies - in real life - it’s a shocking loss to those who primarily knew that person through electronic media - no less so than for people who may have been a close acquaintance in real life.

Dave Winer has been giving a lot of thought as to what happens to that person’s blog and how to preserve it.

But I tend to agree with Jeneane Sessum: Maybe we SHOULD have to lose one another here.

Maybe we let the blog die a natural death, like the person. At first, the blog is still there, even though the person has suddenly died. We can go back and read it. But then it becomes abundantly clear that it never updates - and it becomes a static reminder of the once vivacious interaction we had with them. And then … as the hosting service fee doesn’t get renewed, or the URL expires …. it goes away. Like a tombstone, we may, or may not, be able to go to the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) and re-visit certain elements of the blog.

But essentially, the blog dies. And is forgotten. Like us. And a thousand new blogs are born each day. The world goes on.