26082001 - personal histories
it's interesting to think about what personal histories were like before the internet.
i remember that my dad used to have a video of me singing a dumb little song on youtube. i can't find it now, so he mightve taken it down. but that's what started the thought process.
brief stop by my personal youtube channel, and then on to my dad's current site. i should go through and read more of him blog posts some day. theyre interesting.
makes me wonder if he's read what i post on here, or elsewhere. he's never told me, if he has. i don't think i'd mind if he did. be an interesting conversation, at least. idk.
anyways, i eventually found my grandma's web page. she died in 2010. i wouldn't have remembered the year if it wasn't written along the top of the page. i don't remember her very well.
but she knew me.
she knew me before this version of me existed.
what would she think of the me that exists today?
i kindof imagine we wouldn't get along.
i don't have a specific reason for thinking that.
i guess i don't really know her.
she wrote christmas letters every year.
the ones from 2000 onwards are on the website.
could you imagine?
losing one of those letters?
she's dead now. she's been dead over 15 years.
could you imagine having those letters as your only memory of her. and losing one of them.
the internet imortalizes all.
and the innovation was creating a machine which can parse it.
in the future, will my grandmother's letters be found in the grand library?
will her overuse of exclamation points sour the training data of an archiver?
is there a difference between something being destroyed and something being archived were it is believed to be useless?
is there merit in the thing being destroyed, in the face of that?
time. time. time. time.
it terrifies me.
what am i doing?
why am i doing this to myself?
because it is respectful.
because this person raised me, and the least i can do to honour that sacrifice is to spend a few minutes thinking about them.
to let them affect the me that is.
so their memory may raise me again.
thank you.
i love you.
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