We don’t have anything written by Jesus, Socrates, or Confucius but they are beyond legend, their words weaving their way into ways of thinking and wars and resolutions, with people from many different backgrounds and many different eras with divergent aspirations striving to find a strain of such Men in their own psyche, or their own DNA even. In their case, the fact that they have echoed down through the many generations to the present one is proof of their great magnitude, even if some of it was amplified by the many interpreters down the line. But they have undoubtedly created avatar after avatar after successor after impostor after admirer, all tying back through threads to the Source.
I’ve been thinking recently about “this whole blogging thing,” much like a rapper would say “this rap shit or whatever.” It’s more than journals, or a log, or an advertisement with less pictures. The greatest implications are usually those most originally understated, and such a functionality with the old ‘net was that of hyperlinking. Any old book can give a bibliographical reference to the Consolation of Philosophy, but how much time and effort have I saved you – and therefore spread much more information in general – when I have linked you to the Wikipedia article on the same? Isn’t this greatly affecting the Presidential elections right now? Isn’t this how petitions swell to great magnitude within hours?
Now, “this whole tagging thing” is set to be a possibly more powerful supplement to hyperlinking and how we do things, not just on the Internet, but in our lives – period. Facebook isn’t just a profile for many people, it’s a literal digital extension of their reality – an avatar of their logos. The same is becoming true of other parts of the Internet. Tagging is the way to not only order it, but unify it, until the Internet becomes an extension of ourselves in the most literal sense.
Just like those previous legendary people before us were amplified, redefined, and generally celebrated by those who connected with their products and their own logos many miles away and many years later, the Internet is the evolution of that same principle of what was once oral history, and what was then written history. Who among the people I have linked to my blog in the past will be defined by what they have written in their own blogs, when they become extremely famous (and I am certain that some of them will)? How will that resonate back to me, and how will I resonate to them? In one hundred years, how are these very digital words that I am writing now going to be considered at the Perpetual (not Eternal) Space of Judgment which we all think of now as “t3h 1NtArWuBz” against my own logos? Have I linked to the Neo-Analects? The next Jesus of Nazareth? The Socratic Method 2.0? If so, will I be labeled a disciple, or a practicioner?
3 replies on “A Legend in Bits”
very cool post 🙂
and when your blog becomes the next little red book for all to read, I will be proud to be randomly mentioned in its pages.
Interesting post… With so much written works now in our culture, what’s going to be left over in archives that people will read WAY down the road? And what will be said about our culture?
– Cass