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October 7, 2003
It Happened Tomorrow: Posting to the Future
It's not quite time travel, but it still plays with time and memory in an interesting way. Via Jill: A fascinating website called FutureMe.org that allows you to send an email to yourself at some point in the future.
Jill found this website through Ratchet Up, a site that suggests using "Future Me" as a memory tool for building a vivid image of the here and now, with the goal of creating an eidetic image. I originally was going to promise to post my letters to my future self, but I think I'd rather send them and "forget" about them until I receive the emails later (update: in fact, I'm actually starting to find FutureMe strangely addictive).
You can send the message privately or post it publicly (but anonymously) on the Future Me website. It's certainly worthwhile just to flip through some of the messages that people send to themselves, to see what they imagine they will find important in the future.
It also has the makings of a great Philip K. Dick-style story about someone who sends herself dozens of emails not knowing that she will eventually develop some form of amnesia....
Posted by chuck at October 7, 2003 1:40 PM
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Comments
Gotta ask: did your posting to the future self involve a meditation on the spectacle of Atlanta?
Posted by: Francois Lachance at October 7, 2003 2:33 PM
Nope, although I did mention the leaves changing colors on some trees outside my window. I *think* that entry will be my last one on Atlanta for a while--for some reason it felt a little uninspired.
Posted by: chuck at October 7, 2003 2:42 PM
Chuck
The entry may have felt a "little uninspired" because it was very suggestive: it did inspire reflection at my end. I like how the commonplace image of the square peg in a round hole echoes the name of Anne's blog: Purse Lip Square Jaw.
It also provoked for me images of buildings "stranded" such as the Toronto Harbour Commission building which is "no longer at the water’s edge due to lakefilling". See http://www.torontoport.com/archives/descriptions/pc1.htm
And the gorgeousness of that long Proustian sentence...
quote>
I'm not quite sure how to bring these points back around to Anne's discussion of the spectacle, which leads me to believe that I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, but I think I see the tower as a small fissure in the city's image, but it's a fissure or gap that I might never see without the benefit of walking (rather than driving) past it every day on my way to work.
"tower as small fissure in the city's image" a poignant phrase made even more poignant by the possibility of being overlooked -- much like a blog entry that is there for those that walk the archives before they disappear...
Posted by: Francois Lachance at October 8, 2003 11:19 AM
Wow--I've never been compared to Proust before! Of course, as someone from the southeastern US, I get my Proust secondhand through Faulkner. I like that tower phrase, too, though....
I think I've just generally felt "uninspired" lately because of the midsemester grind. I'll come back to the "stranded" Toronto building later, but I'm getting ready to teach.
Posted by: chuck at October 8, 2003 12:41 PM