This rather melancholy observation on the fleeting nature of human life is analogous to our virtual existence in Cyberspace. Day in and day out many people, myself included, ply our trades in one form or another in this great global computer network. We sound off about our lives and our work, we revel in our triumphs, we mourn our tragedies, and we suffer our defeats. We twitter and we tweet we blog and we browse. We celebrate the advent of new life as we lament the passing of old.
Where once only the privileged gave voice to their brief lives, now there are millions who can strut and fret their hour upon the stage. Where once pen and parchment and later the printing press largely determined one’s enduring legacy, now a few simple lines of HTML and the right storage medium all but assure a lasting memorial.
To be sure, many more players are heard, but in the end will it make any difference? What will the Internet become in a hundred years? What will happen to the Facebooks, the Myspaces and the Twitters? What fate is in store for the millions of blogs that daily record each and every aspect of our lives? For now that question remains largely unanswered, but I would like to think, decades from now, some small part of me, might still be present in a TXT or HTML file, in an MP4 or in a JPG. Perhaps my idiot’s tale in all its trivialness will be read or watched by my descendants.
A droll notion to be sure…but oddly comforting too.
