Nick tagged me for a comment on his blog on immortality. It's an interesting set of thoughts.
As an academic, much of my professional life is defined by my publication record (that list of papers isn't up to date...hey ho). The point of publishing in journals of record (and, in my discipline, in rigorous peer-reviewed conferences) is that your writing is archived in the world's academic libraries forever. Undoubtedly, this is immortality in a way achieved by none of my ancestors: they persist only in occasional birth certificates, marriage records, census returns, tomb stones. There's some kudos to it. My thoughts will not die with me: they could have influence upon untold people as yet unborn (or maybe not :-) ).
But, of course, this blog will probably live forever, too. As will any comments that you, dear reader, care to contribute. There's perhaps less of a guarantee about that than about academic writing being successfully archived: but communication is cheap, and digital storage is cheaper. Someone may well be born in the next decade whose every spoken word is archived (and indexed) forever. It is very likely that by the time I reach my dotage, if problems with human memory have not been resolved, I shall at least have a ready record of everything I say and hear, and see. Unless aggressive privacy laws supervene, all of that record will probably last forever.
It was once fashionable to scare people by talking of the day of judgement, when the righteous judge would open a record of everything you had ever done, ever failed to do, and even everything you had thought about. The first is now easy; the second is perhaps ambiguous, but great strides are being made towards the third. And along the way, there's my online search history, my browsing history, and my email archive. Maybe it will be shouted from the rooftops - or at least made available on Google (or Bing :-) ).
If immortality actually means everything being laid bare, I wonder whether I will like that or not. But it's not really up to me. I suspect it's going to happen anyway. Welcome to the 21st century, the age of the immortals.
2 comments:
Hmm. . digital immortality. I remember when the old Sunday School teachers used to say that when you died you would have to watch a video of all the things you had done wrong during your life. With the digital age here, I guess that is more and more likely. Perhaps the afterlife is YouTube for the soul and you watch the whole thing.
Yep, I think the day of judgement could be coming to a web site near you, real soon now.
Post a Comment