[1453] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Via Google, Tomorrow is Yesterday,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Sun Apr 17 13:50:42 2011
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 10:28:08 -0700
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Via Google, Tomorrow is Yesterday, or Yesterday is Tomorrow, or ...
http://j.mp/hEMKGG (This message in Google Buzz)
- - -
Greetings. Here's a little reminder of what happens when you've been
online long enough, and of the bizarre sort of "immortality" that
Google enables.
This morning I did a Google Search for a Quite Obscure Topic related
to, uh, "multidimensional physics" (more or less). I wouldn't have
been surprised to find nothing, but I did find -- at the very top of
the search results -- a single hit that (judging from the snippet)
looked highly relevant. None of the other results looked promising in
this case.
I clicked through and started to read. Yeah, good stuff, except, hmm,
something looked awfully familiar ...
DAMN. It's my *own* posting. From almost exactly 30 years ago in an
SF-L (Science Fiction Lovers) mailing list digest - 13 May 1981 from
Lauren@UCLA-SECURITY (no domains back then, of course). SF-L was (by
the way) the *very first* ARPANET (and thus Internet) Digest -- created
originally as a "temporary expedient" due to what were perceived to be
"high" email volumes at the time.
http://j.mp/frNYIU (SF-L Digest Vol 3 Issue 125 / Google)
I've run into versions of this phenomenon before, but never over such
a long time span on a purely serendipitous basis.
On one hand, I feel like one of those characters in a sci-fi plot who
comes face to face with an earlier version of themselves through a
time travel misadventure. Pretty cool.
On the other hand, the realization that apparently in the three decades
since I wrote those words, nobody else has written anything relevant on
the topic (at least that was indexed) is a bit depressing.
The Google Time Machine.
Welcome to the 21st century (and the 20th century!), indeed.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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