Web traces

People worry endlessly about preservation of electronic artwork. They worry so much that sometimes people don’t make the art, fearing their progeny might find it inconvenient to view.

Of course, the progeny might be busy. They might by unappreciative. They might have lousy taste. To hell with them.

But a correspondent happened to remind me yesterday of a girl I knew in high school, a lovely girl who killed herself and of whom I have always tried to think (though I did not know her well) from time to time. She deserves that, at least. She lived and died long before the Web, and people didn’t write books about her, or even newspaper stories. There's no Facebook page, no twitstream, no blog.

Hypertext links are about memory. I try to remember winter...