August 09, 2004
Google, Immortality and Web Standards : The case for using blog software as your web site matrix
by Liza Sabater
John Battelle's Searchblog: Gilgamesh, Search, and Immortality :: One of the best philosophical ponderings on the meaning of internet technology. Fantastic.
In my search for immortality, I had found the oldest known named author, within thirty seconds I came to know his name and his work. This man, Shin-eqi-unninni, now lived in my own mind, and in a sense, has through his writings, with an assist from Google and a university professor, become immortal. Even stonier, if you will, Gilgamesh's story is one of man's struggle with the concept of immortality, and the story itself was nearly lost in an act of literary vandalism.
The opening lines of the first tablet certainly resonate:
The one who saw all [Sha nagba imuru ] I will declare to the world,
The one who knew all I will tell about [line missing]
He saw the great Mystery, he knew the Hidden:
He recovered the knowledge of all the times before the Flood.
He journeyed beyond the distant, he journeyed beyond exhaustion,
And then carved his story on stone. [naru : stone tablets ]
What does it mean, I wondered, to become immortal through words pressed in clay – or, as was the case here, through words formed in bits and transferred over the web? Is that not what every person longs for – what Odysseus chose over Kalypso’s nameless immortality – to die, but to be known forever? And does not search offer the same immortal imprint - is not existing forever in the indexes of Google and others the modern day equivalent of carving our stories into stone? For bloggers, in particular, I believe the answer is yes.
Loyal readers know they must suffer through my tendencies to wander off into the desert of joint-after-midnight meanderings (even if the joints have not been formally broken out), but there you have it. I searched for immortality, and dadgummit, I think I found it.
Posted by Liza Sabater in Blogs, Google, Philosophy, Pop Culture, Religion, Sidelinks
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