![]() ![]() If there could be one book to represent Man in all his frailty, tragedy, comedy, humor, dreams, disappointments, and poetic yearnings, I do not know of a better one than the collected works of Shakespeare. ![]() ![]() People will have their own words to produce and be forgotten. I don't expect, desire or deserve immortality for my own words. It will be as if no one had ever spoken, and every human life had been forgotten. A very few have been preserved, mostly in writing, now in other forms, but eventually they will be lost, too. Far, far more words than that have been lost: Virtually every word spoken by Man. It would be no special tragedy if the contents of the internet were lost. It is about the dilemma of being alive and able to think and being aware of our own mortality. This is not really about the destiny of our words on the internet. He wrote with poetry, vision, and mournful drama. He was venting his feelings not only about his advice column but about the very act of writing itself. If the aliens are lucky enough to stumble upon Google Earth, will they devise the correct software? I began reading Cary Tennis's answer in an idle frame of mind. And if the contents of the internet, like radio signals, travel unimaginable distances into the void and are intercepted by a SETI program on another world, and can be interpreted and understood, what will it avail? No human being has ever been able to master the internet after its first hour or two. And eventually the files will be lost or forgotten. Will our best, well-meant advice ever help anybody else in the future? Will our detailed knowledge ever be of any use? Or do we just get filed, permanently?"įiled permanently, is my guess. ![]() His question comes down to: "Will anybody ever read what we write here, after today? I am sure our writing will persist in the World Wide Web, but will anybody ever read it again? I suspect the question was asked by Tennis of himself, in a spell of existential funk. These thoughts were inspired, oddly enough, by an advice column by Cary Tennis on. ![]()
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