Friends,
We tend to think of information as a permanent record of our fleeting passage through time. Yet paintings fade, sculptures erode and pages become moth chow. Even great libraries burn or decline; vanishing out of existence. Granted, a humble basket might survive ten thousand years under the right conditions, still, that’s a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. In this digital age, it’s tempting to think that, freed from the shackles of physical media, our photos, programs and posts will live on. Yet, ones and zeros must be stored on decaying hardware, often owned by private enterprises who may one day go bankrupt, end support or simply walk away from a platform. We may cheat entropy for a decade (perhaps a century or even a millennium). We may even be gifted enough for our artifacts to find relevance with people living in that distant future (relevance, now there’s another sticky wicket). Wow, that came-out a lot darker than I intended. I don’t believe hard work and memory preservation are altogether futile endeavors. I do believe there’s a balance to be struck between living and preserving a record of our existence, where we spend the lion’s share of our time living and the memory preservation business is limited to the minimum necessary (in this, do as I say, not as I do 😉). Spend time with loved ones, follow your passions and make a snow angel once in a while. Speaking of living, I can’t think of a better way to enjoy the fleeting than through a big bite into a fresh donut. Time to go buy some! Bye, bye.
Happy Friday!
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