A column and a snippet for the price of one.
After accumulating a large group of notes for this column it became time to try to put it together. Doing that meant opening my Boidem folder and finding the last posted column which I could open in DreamWeaver to use as a template for preparing this one.
To my surprise, however, I found that I already had a column that had the URL that ultimately is that of this column. Not only that, there were already seven paragraphs in that column. Had I written a Boidem column that I'd never posted? As I read that column I realized what had happened. I'd started writing a June 2018 column but didn't get around to finishing, or posting, it. All that I had was the first two paragraphs, while after them was the continuation of the April 2018 column. I don't know why I decided not to finish or post that column. Frankly, the subject was a good, and worthwhile, one. Perhaps I became too involved with other projects and simply forgot about it ... for eight years, until now, when I can offer it as a sort of Boidem Easter egg.
Remember me not
More or less corresponding to the posting of this column, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, perhaps best known as the "right to be forgotten" law, is going into effect. It's my guess that although numerous articles have been written about the regulation, most internet users are unaware of it, or its implications. What's more, even if they were aware of it, they probably wouldn't care. Jeff Jarvis was probably right when he noted that most people would be more than willing to relinquish their privacy for the benefits, real or imagined, that being public offers. Personally I'm less concerned with the privacy aspects of being forgotten than with the more personal question of what it means to be able to forget, or remember, something.
Do we bookmark in order to remember ... or to make it easier to forget? Yes, I wrote about this years ago, and it seems that the issue has become even more critical. Ostensibly we bookmark something because in that way it will be easier for us to get to it again when we want it. This of course assumes that we'll want it, meaning that we've bookmarked in order to remember. But the simple and basic act of bookmarking actually makes it easier for us to forget, to leave something behind us, to get it out of mind.
I guess that it was predictable that in the above linked article from The Atlantic, Julie Beck refers to the passage in Plato's Phaedrus that discusses whether writing is a blessing or a curse. It's hard not to mention that dialogue if you're going to write about writing and memory. It's sort of required lip-service. The problem is that referring to it has become almost mandatory. If you don't you're admitting that you don't know the literature, but if you do readers may think "okay, so you're name dropping; you've referred to it, but did you actually read it?". Though I tried to deal with writing and memory, in one way or another, numerous times in The Boidem, I referred to that dialogue only once.
Frankly, those first two paragraphs looked like a promising start to a good column, and forgetting certainly seems like a fitting topic for a final Boidem column. I suppose that even if it's only a snippet it fits. But I shouldn't exaggerate. This wasn't something missing that I finally found and elatedly noted that it had been missing. There's no epiphany involved here. I didn't find some critically missing piece that (at the last minute, of course) helped me reach closure. It's far from being a Rosebud moment.
Go to: It was thirty years ago today