Confronting New Ideas

A matter of Life and Death

I've given some thought to the meaning of death as it applies to those who have posted frequently on the internet. We often don't see people's writings in the order that they write them, and that means we can see new posts from them after they die.

Even without the internet this happens. I was in a bookstore recently and saw a book by Michael Crichton and asked the shopkeeper, “Isn't this his third posthumous book?” “Yeah…” he sheepishly responded. Someone is plainly raiding his basement for rejected works and projects that were far enough along that someone else can complete them and claim to have been co-author. His heirs are probably happy for the income, even if the publishing timeline is confusing to some readers.

Perhaps it's even possible for a prolific writer to write so much that readers never really perceive them as dead because they just keep seeing new stuff. So in what sense are they dead? Most readers were perhaps never going to meet them, and so in some sense—of observables—these writers are doing the same things that live ones are.

The elusive nature of intelligence

The big thing dead authors cannot do is the same thing GenAI/LLMs cannot do: competently respond to a new situation, question, or idea.

Oh, sure, the prompt topic might be something someone has speculated on before, so these engines can regurgitate that. Or the topic idea might be enough similar to a previous idea that the probabilities of guessing something acceptable to say based on just assuming it was really just an old idea is high enough that it escapes scrutiny that the topic idea was not really properly understood.

As I imagine—or perhaps just hope?—the makers of standardized tests like the SAT would tell you, there's more to competence than statistically guessing enough right answers to get a passing grade. The intent of such tests is not to say that if you know these things, you know the topic. It is to assume you have a mental model that lets you answer on any possible aspect of that model, and then to poke at enough randomly chosen places that you can hope to detect flaws in the model.

But these so-called AI technologies do not have a mental model. They just hope they've read enough standardized test preparation guides or pirated actual tests that they can fake their way. And since a lot of the things that they're claiming competence in are things that people have already written about, the technology manages to show promise—perhaps more promise than is warranted.

Real people build a mental model that allows them to confront not just the present but the future, while these technologies do no such planning. The models real people make probably hope the future is a lot like today, but people hopefully can't—and anyway shouldn't—get by on bluffing. Not the kind of bluffing today's “AI” tech does. That tech is not growing. It is dead. It has no plan for confronting a new idea other than to willfully ignore the significance of any real newness.

Just like my example of publication and death on the internet, the “AI” game is structured so it takes a long time for weakness to be recognized—unless just the right question is asked. And then, perhaps, the emperor will be seen clearly to have no clothes.

The dynamic nature of ethics

Which is also why it troubles me when I'm told that people are incorporating ethics. It troubles me because ethics itself has to be growing all the time, constantly asking itself, “How might I not be ethical?”

Ethics is not something you do on one day and are done with. Ethics is a continuing process, and one that needs its own models.

Worse, the need for ethics is easily buried under the sophistry of how things have always been done. The reason that bias and stereotypes and all that have survived as long as they have is that they do have practical value to someone, perhaps many people, even as they trod on the just due of others.

The sins of our society are deeply woven, and easily rediscovered even if superficial patches are added to hide them. Our whole culture is a kind of rationalization engine for doing things in biased ways based on stereotype information, and AI is an engine ready to reinforce that, operating at such high speed that it's hard to see happening, and in such volume that it's economically irresistible not to accept as good enough, no matter the risk of harm.

Where we're headed

Today's attempts at “AI” bring us face to face with stark questions about whether being smart is actually all that important, or whether faking it is good enough. And as long as you never put these things in situations where the difference matters, maybe the answer will seem to be that smart, in fact, doesn't matter. But…

There will be times when being smart really does matter, and I think we're teaching ourselves trust in the wrong technologies for those situations.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post began as a post on Mastodon. It has been edited to correct myriad typos and to clarify and expand various portions in subtle ways. Think of that post as a rough draft.

The graphic uses a lightbulb drawn by abacus.ai's gpt-4o engine with flux.1. The original prompt was “draw a simple black and white image that shows a silhouette of a person thinking up an idea, showing a lightbulb near their head” but then I removed the person from the picture and overlaid the circle and slash ‘by hand’ in Gimp.

A Change of Climate

I sit on a wooden bench, held by wrought iron curves in a hallway of sandstones. An antique building, lovingly refurbished in layers of creeping modernity, the mortar that probably once held these stones long since bolstered, replaced, or just newly imitated by concrete. And yet in the old style. A curvature of bricks overhead, forming an arch down the hallway. The terrace at my feet is well-worn criss-crossed stone.

It is cool in here, outside the reach of the piercing midday sun, but I can see the sky at the end of this tunnel of a hall—and through a rectangular stone opening. The blue of that distant sky beckons, beyond tall trees that seem designed to emphasize the sky’s elusive height. Wisps of cumulus clouds dart about, seeming to float higher than they belong, and yet with the occasional light cirrus streak well above that. The sky is big here, and even the tallest trees struggle to reach it. Crooked pine-like trees, unlike the pines at home, with only a few broad branches high up, not the triangles of New England pines, but more like large green dandelions or fuzzy umbrellas. Ivy works its way up part of their shafts, adding to the exotic look, but giving up the climb long before the top.

The valley stretches for miles, with row upon row of contented buildings, with their red tile roofs and distinctive walls of muted orange and sun-drunk beige. Nothing is in particularly neat lines, yet there is still a relaxed order to it all, a comfortableness perhaps borne of tradition, a peace with the pace of existence, a well-worn efficiency that I imagine to come of understanding what is necessary or beautiful to life, and what can be rightly ignored. Even where there is wear on things here, it seems less product of neglect and more just a well-earned badge of honor.

There is a timeless quality to it all, like a place that has existed in essentially this form since long before me, and that will go on this way long after. The residents are adapted to life here. They know its rhythms. They are in harmony with how things are.

I’ll miss all of that.

Not when I leave, I mean, because I could return.

But because the harmony is a property not only of the people with the earth, but the earth with the people.

And Climate Change will take all of that away, never to return.

I’m glad I saw this place before it became a desert, unable to grow olives and grapes. I’m glad I saw this place when its people were prosperous and proud.

Science is an odd thing, and hard for some to trust. But science sees things that others do not. Things in the distance, and yet not always that far distant, because we can be so very nearsighted when we wish to be.

The earth has a cancer, and cancer starts innocently, unpresumingly. If you wait until it’s obvious, it’s too late. There are those among us who would wait to fix the Climate until it’s obvious. And that will be too late.

So I’m glad I saw this place before the effect of that indifference takes hold. It was a great achievement, that easy civilization.

I will miss it. I think we all will.

Assuming any of us are even left to do so.

---

Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

Originally published June 11, 2014 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): extinction, cancer, death, life, desert, drought, climate change, climate, memory, beauty, beautiful view, scene, view, le santucce, tuscany, italy

The photo, titled "Tuscany Italy Countryside" by Linnaea Mallette was obtained from publicdomainpictures.net, which asserts that it is in the public domain.

Background & Context: I wrote this last week while at a writing retreat hosted by Cary Tennis at Le Santucce in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy last week. It was a beautiful place to sit and think, but devastating Climate effects will not discriminate as to venue. They'll happen everywhere and to all of us.

Corporations Are Not People

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Corporations are not people, my friends, no matter what Mitt Romney says.

Corporations are corporations. People are people.

If corporations were people, they would obey the same tax laws as regular people do. Instead, they have a separate set of rules. What an amazing irony, given that “legal personhood” arose, in part, from a desire for equal protection under tax law.

If corporations were people, when they broke the law, they would be punished, not just by fines but sometimes by imprisonment or death.

If corporations were people, they could not urinate in public. This would be a relief to the employees of certain corporations, who are presently asked to enjoy humiliating public displays of trickle down. We'd insist corporations use a rest room like everyone else. Although that would usually require knowing their gender. If something doesn't have a gender, that's a big clue that the something is not actually a person.

If corporations were people, they would be counted in the US census.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

 —13^th Amendment
    to US Constitution

If corporations were people, some would be old enough to receive Social Security.

If corporations were people, taking money out of them would be called robbery, not profit or dividends. Owners would surely justify this robbery by saying the corporation was a dependent body, but we would see quickly enough that it was the owner that was dependent on the corporation, not vice versa.

If corporations were people, other people could not buy, sell, trade or own them. We don't let people own people in the US. We call that slavery. Every person controls his own destiny.

If corporations were people, they could not be dissolved by other people. We'd call that murder.

If corporations were people, then from the moment of their very conception, their ultimate existence would be assured—no backing out allowed. If any other person interfered with or otherwise aborted plans to sign articles of incorporation, pro-life groups would insist that was murder, too.

If corporations were people, they would have a childhood. During their first eighteen years, they would attend school and learn how to be good citizens. They would not be allowed to sign contracts.

If corporations were people, they could not exist simultaneously in multiple countries at the same time. We would know when they were in one country or another. They would need passports and visas to move around, just like people do.

If corporations were people, we'd give them freedom of speech, but no more such freedom than we give any other person.

If corporations were people, there would be limits on how much they could donate to political campaigns. Because people have such limits.

If corporations were people, some could even vote or run for office—if they were old enough and born or living in the right place. But if we caught them coercing the vote of another person, perhaps an employee, we'd throw them in jail.

If corporations were people, they might need freedom of religion. But not so that they could coerce the rights of others, and instead so that they could explore what they thought of life, death, and ethics, independent of the people who gave birth to them. Religion is a very personal choice we should each make for ourselves, not owners for corporations, nor corporations for employees.

If corporations were people, I wouldn't have to write this article. Because when two things are the same thing, so many questions like this just don't come up. And yet the questions keep coming and this list could go on. Corporations are not people in so many ways.

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Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This first part of a 3-part series was originally published December 2, 2013 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman. The next part is We The People (and Corporations). The series concludes with Employers of Religion.

The public domain liberty bell graphic came from freeclipartnow.com.

Tags (from Open Salon): politics, incorporation, corporations, corporate personhood, legal personhood, legal person, legal personality, taxation, crimes, punishment, imprisonment, life, death, death penalty, urination, trickle down, census, social security, robbery, slavery, human trafficking, murder, pro-life, childhood, contracts, travel, passport, visa, home country, citizen, citizenship, speech, religion, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, religious freedom, philosophy, ethics, vote, voter, voting, run for office, running for office, candidate, elect, election, elected, office holder

Not Coming Home for Dinner

In my mind it seems so vivid and detailed, like an event extending over quite some time. But it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds.

I was on a highway. Traffic had slowed slightly, though not enough.

There was an obstacle, clearly. The two cars ahead were moving oddly.

I scanned around instinctively, trying to interpret.

A squirrel. Trying to cross the road. Three lanes. He clearly knew the peril. I wondered what had possessed him even to try.

Like in a game of Frogger, he darted toward the edge, then like lightning reversed course and back, trying to find the safe ground.

Unlike in Frogger, the cars were not neat automatons moving in straight lines. They actually cared.

I think that their caring made it worse. The squirrel couldn’t calculate what they would do, and they couldn’t calculate what he would do.

He dived in front of one of the cars and I wondered if he’d be okay beneath, but my impression was that he must have been clipped by the front wheel. Not crushed, but flung.

Even in being hit, he moved gracefully. Squirrel movement seems always so like a ballet. It must be the tail.

But he seemed no longer under his own power.

He wriggled and flowed like a banner in a breeze, and ended almost coiled, like someone’s furry hat blown off by the wind.

Definitely without power now. He, but also I. No way to know if he was dead or merely soon to be. It would be the same.

Nothing to do. Traffic moves on. It would take forever to loop back and be impossibly dangerous to intervene.

It was just a squirrel. And I’m not one of those “animal are people too” kinds of guys. But he wasn’t hurting anyone and no one wanted to hurt him. Just bad luck.

I wish it had been some other kind of animal, though. Squirrels are so social. As I drove away, all I could think was that he probably had a family. Just like us, he was commuting home from work.

His family probably wouldn’t get a call from the squirrel police or anything organized like that. They’d just stay up wondering. They’re intelligent creatures. They might suspect. Ultimately, one way or another, they’d know.

Nothing to be done. I drove on.

I’ve seen roadkill many times. But never so personally.

---

Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

Originally published May 14, 2011 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Text copyright © 2011 by Kent Pitman. All Rights Reserved.
Photo copyright © 2010 by CoyoteOldStyle. Used with permission.

Tags (from Open Salon): philosophy, incident, accident, squirrel, witness, story, recollection, tale, tail, roadkill, sad, painful, family, life, death, life and death, not coming home, traffic, traffic accident, highway, highway death, in an instant, in a flash, animal, personal, personally, personal experience, up close, up close and personal

That Creeping Feeling

Some horror films, especially those with half a dozen sequels, are very melodramatic in style, presenting one or more people walking into a situation where the audience knows danger to lurk but the characters have no inkling of that danger, or haven’t admitted it. Scene by excruciating scene, the plot unfolds, the author having arranged matters so that the helpless characters cannot see ordinary safety unraveling all about.

Climate change is like that. It unfolds slowly, patiently, its plot never moving in a straight line, making sure that there’s every reason for most of the characters to to feel comfortable. As with a good melodrama, a few characters are aware of the problem and they struggle to warn the others, but always to no avail as a gruesome ending becomes increasingly inevitable.

The sick plot twist here is that we are the authors and we are the ones arranging for our own complacency, even in the face of the clues our fellow characters have discovered. It feels sometimes like the people who know what’s really going on are locked in a sound-proof plexiglass room, able to see out clearly, watching it unfold, but powerless to stop it or even to just get a message out.

Would that it were just a sci-fi or horror movie, or even a simple nightmare from which one could awaken.

* * * * *

Cancer is a subtle enemy. It presents itself in such small ways, almost imperceptibly. We may see signs, but hope we don’t. It creeps. Worst of all, it accelerates.

We want to control its rate, to force it to be linear, measured, paced. But try as we might, we cannot hold it still. It resists commands.

We seek to impose onto it, by force of will, by clutching at every definition and argument we can lay our fingers upon, that it must move, change, or grow only when we say.

We command of it a cartoon physics that says it will not bite us until we look, and then we steadfastly refuse to look.

As with all things Death, we are skilled at ways of looking away from it, hoping that if we don’t meet its direct gaze, it won’t come for us today. We hope it will simply walk past, taking no notice, our apparent indifference having saved us.

Climate change is like that, too.

* * * * *

Author's Notes:

These are just my subjective impressions. Please comment accordingly.
(We'll do objectivity another day.)

Originally published November 8, 2010 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): acceleration, accelerates, creeping, creepy, death, denial, pace, cartoon physics, cancer, novel, mystery, escape, melodrama, warning, warn, cassandra, paradigm, sense, feeling, emotional, emotion, visualization, analogy, metaphor, global warming, climate change, politics

Erik Naggum, R.I.P.

A friend of mine died recently. His name was Erik Naggum. He lived in Norway. I knew him primarily via the net, through his professional reputation, his posts to internet newsgroups, and through occasional personal email on matters technical and philosophical. And we met once at a conference in person.

His death was probably of complications due to ulcerative colitis¹. But I want not to speak of his death, but his life.

He was a controversial soul because he was technically brilliant, and to put it much too mildly, he was not graceful in his handling of people he perceived as dumb or foolish. In point of fact, he would decide in a moment that he was talking to such a person and would become instantly excruciatingly intolerant of them, using harsh language that was at best colorful and at worst really outright mean. His posts online were a mix of cordial, thoughtful, and actively insightful prose with pointed barbs, laced with expletives and accusations that someone was insane or deserved to die. His tendancy to shift gears and go negative was not my favorite trait in him.

At the one conference where I spent time with him in person, by the way, he was pleasant, polite, and soft-spoken, and nothing like his online persona. I have read accounts by others that say the same.

In researching this, I ran across the following attempt to lighten the mood:

On Sat, 05 Jan 2002 00:29:41 GMT, Erik Naggum wrote:

> ... fucks like that frog-eating vermin ...
> ...Fuck you....
> ... Shit-for-brains ...
> ...that French fuck ...
> ...scumbags...
> ... the fucking retards...
> ...just go die...
> ...reeking French moron ...
> ...Get the fuck out of here...
> ...you pricks ...
> ...pussballs...
> ...sick fucks ...
> ...stenching filth ...

You are becoming repetitive.
How about some nice norwegian swear words ?

But I hope to make the case that he was worth the trouble.

The posts about him since the announcement of his death have been a mix of warm remembrances and shrugs of good riddance. It's not often you see discussion of someone's death accompanied by so much bitterness. I remember many such send-offs for Jerry Falwell, for example. But in defense of his detractors, Falwell had quite an army of disciples primed to carry out political missions that many considered hateful. By contrast, while Naggum was a difficult person to talk to sometimes, he didn't enlist armies of people to go out and be mean to others. He just spoke his mind.

On a reddit discussion forum after Erik's death, one person wrote, “He flamed me for my spelling, suggesting that there should be a spellchecker in the NNTP server (or client, not sure) that rejected postings with so many mistakes. But it helped - I learned to use a spell checker. His form was sometimes crass, but his intentions were good.”

He was frequently called upon to defend himself as to his personal style. Once, for example, he wrote, “Why so many of you fucking losers have to read what I post and work yourself up like cats in heat, and then ask me not to post as opposed to they not reading what they do not like, I have not figured out.”

And, indeed, the forum from which this text was taken, the primary forum in which I came to know Erik, was an unmoderated forum that was part of USENET, a distributed discussion technology that dates back to the ARPANET, the net that predated the Internet. An important aspect of unmoderated USENET forums was their free speech aspect, and there really was no recourse in such forums if you didn't like what you read other than to stop reading. So he had a certain point, which I came to believe and defend.

He was well-respected for the pioneering nature, the meticulous quality, and the beauty of the code he wrote. In addition to his technical accomplishments, he was a deep thinker on many issues, well-read in traditional philosophy but with his own very definite opinions.

He sent mail to the New York Times, condemning George W. Bush's actions subsequent to 9/11. I don't know if it was published; the copy I have was sent me directly by Erik at the same time he wrote to them. The letter he wrote was long and made many points highly critical of both Bush and the citizenry of the US for having tolerated Bush. However, one small aspect caught my eye and stuck with me, so I went back to that old email to retrieve the exact text. He had written, “But there is still one thing that America has taught the world. You have taught us all that giving second chances is not just generosity, but the wisdom that even the best of us sometimes make stupid mistakes that it would be grossly unfair to believe were one's true nature.”

This stuck with me in part because Erik's detractors are so quick to be unforgiving of his faults, and yet he could see clearly the need for people to be allowed to mend. And I often sometimes wondered when he was in his more abusive modes, condemning others for a suspected insanity, whether he was really talking to someone else, or talking to himself. He seemed to be plagued somewhat by demons of his own, and to project them onto others. But looking back on it, it seems so harmless, and his intent so good, in spite of all.

Perhaps I see in him a bit of me. I try not to do the verbal lashing out thing, or not as harshly certainly. But I certainly understand the frustration with people who don't see my point. And I've been known to be abrupt with people. Yet I'm always just trying to improve things, and forever surprised at how hard it can be for people to see that. So perhaps it's easier for me to look for good intention in someone like Erik.

I learned a lot from talking to Erik on matters technical and non-technical. But one thing I learned, not from what he said, but from the meta-discussion which was always there about whether to tolerate him, is that I think we as people are not all the same. We make rules of manners and good ways to be that are for typical people. But the really exceptional people among us are not typical. Often the people who achieve things in fact do so because of some idiosyncracy of them, some failing they have turned to a strength.

In a discussion on reddit, someone had suggested that we should say: “Erik Naggum was a contributor to the HyTime standard who had a nasty habit of flaming people and driving them away from great technologies.” My reply was that, no, we should say “The great endeavors of mankind are often done by people with this or that weakness.”

For example, the Republican Party in the United States has consistently suggested that somehow the US would be better if it were run by someone with flawless moral character. Jimmy Carter fit that bill and yet when inflation went into double digits, Republicans hated him just the same. Bill Clinton, for all his flaws, was a more effective president.

So I liked Erik. Does that make him a role model? I think the answer is “in some ways, not in others.” But isn't that true for all people? Telling our youth that they must be perfect and pointing them to people who we offer as examples of perfection seems like rigging the game for everyone to lose. Eventually it will be found that the models of perfection are not perfect. And the people we're pointing to these models will either be disillusioned or will have protected themselves with cynicism. We want neither. Better to identify people as people, and to say “there's a trait [or achievement] to emulate.” Or even, “there's a person from whom you can learn a great deal.” No need to say, “Be everything that person is” nor “Be do everything that person does.”

Michael Phelps is a perfect illustration of this. People of great accomplishment, being human, do have flaws. Even after the bong incident, he can still be a role model for swimming, and the hard work it takes to succeed.

Growing up, and starting out in the world, one's flaws can keep one from getting noticed, and it's well to teach our youth to work on minimizing them. But at some point we must not rewrite history and pretend that we had the choice to do all the great deeds that have been done by only encouraging and revering people for whom there is nothing bad to be said.

A great many people practicing Computer Science in particular are great as a consequence of their obsessive nature of one kind or another. The ability to be focused, meticulous, intolerant of deviation from spec are all qualities we programmers need, and sometimes the personality types that are attracted to the field of computer science are going to show effects in other areas.

In Erik there was at least a person who died having dared to speak his mind. I so admire that. But more than that, he had things to say. And they were things that made the effort worthwhile. I'd rather that than endless blathering of no consequence delivered in oh-so-polite tones.

I will miss him greatly. But I am thankful I had a chance to get to know him.

I had to laugh when someone anonymous wrote:

Erik Naggum
1965-2009
He hated stupid people

I don't even know that he hated stupid people, though. It seemed to me he just didn't like wasting time with them.

But either way, it is perhaps more appropriate to allow Erik to write his own epitaph. On his own web page, Erik offers his explanation of the meaning of life. It's not long. I recommend reading it. But I quote here a single sentence, which I offer as evidence that he accomplished what seems like a reasonably stated mission:

“The purpose of human existence is to learn and to understand as much as we can of what came before us, so we can further the sum total of human knowledge in our life.” —Erik Naggum

¹ Kjetilho posted to reddit, “the autopsy concluded that the cause of death was a massively hemorrhaging stomach ulcer. my take is that it was probably caused by the large amounts of NSAIDs he took for his bad back, which he in turn got from too little physical activity. so in a way, the root cause could be said to be UC.”

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Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

Originally published June 24, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Photo cropped from a photo by Kevin Layer,
licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Other Remembrances of Erik
Tobias Rittweiler's Blog
Ruben on VoIP
Arve's Post (and Discussion) on Reddit
Kjetil's Post on The Subclass Explosion
Zach's Journal Entry

Vintage Erik
Defending his occasional outbursts: [1] [2] [3]
Discussing Common Lisp: [1] [2] [3]
Discussing abstract concepts: Asking for references

Erik, Posthumously
Erik Naggum on Atlas Shrugged

Tags (from Open Salon): personal, erik naggum, erik naggum eulogy, death, erik naggum death, r.i.p., erik naggum r.i.p., friend, politics, personal style, manners, controversy, controversial, role model, personal flaw, character flaw, legacy, epitaph, philosophy, meaning of life, commentary, abuse, abusive, foul language, common lisp, sgml, contribution, fools, foolish, intolerance, abruptness, free speech, excellence, insight, michael phelps, jimmy carter, bill clinton, jerry falwell

The URLs of the Mind

I moved a lot growing up,
so I didn't like throwing things away.
I liked collecting things—until finally
they made things stamped “COLLECTIBLE.”
The day of collecting was past.

I still collected things, but
I came to seize those days where
I caught myself throwing something out
that I hadn't expected to.
Dropping everything,
I'd furiously rush to throw away more,
before the packratishness returned.

Some things I couldn't get rid of, though.
They were reminders of times past,
pointers into a tangled web of human memory,
the URLs of the mind.

To lose them would be to lose the memory,
or perhaps just to lose the opportunity
to accidentally click through—
revisiting times past.

---

It's why we're all so confused when someone dies.

Their things seemed so important the day before.
Now we want to treat them reverently,
but we can't.
There's nothing left to access.

The value was within the person,
a human being,
human experiences.
Once open for service,
now finally closed forever to visitors.

These artifacts of experience
performed their function
only for the one (or the few) who participated
in the memory's creation,
and to whom it had been entrusted.

Gone the site of our memory,
the possessions we amass
are but 404 URLs.

---

Packrat that I am,
it's sometimes been
that I could let the thing go,
keeping just the picture.
A tinyurl.

So after traveling on business for years,
I felt sure that I was destined
to open up a little shop
to sell all those little hotel soaps
and little hotel shampoos.

I finally had to let go of that idea.
They were taking up too much space!
But first, I took a snapshot
to remember.

Such images,
though sometimes art themselves,
as keys are ephemeral.

Only I
have the password
to the protected site
where the memory lingers.

---

Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

Originally published October 7, 2008 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): poem, poetry, memory, remembering, photos, photographs, death, net, internet, url, tinyurl, 404, hotel soap, hotel shampoo