Waiting for mail to arrive?

It used to be an essential moment in the day. The moment that the mailman (or woman) came and throws something in that mail-box. I remember that when I was young, our mailman even came twice a day. What a luxury.

Nowadays the waiting for mail has changed quite a bit. One actively look for ones own mail by collecting the e-mail. Or better, why not search on the internet in all those BLOG's that people have published. Some of them you know, and before you know it, you find new information, even before the person has written it to you. Now that is fast communication!

Nice to read Michael Leigh's reaction to my previous entry. Seems he is keeping track of my BLOG. That is the fun of such a BLOG. It is like writing a letter, but not knowing who is going to read it. So yes, I do enjoy seeing those reactions. Actually they cause e-mail as well, since each entry generates an e-mail as well.

Nowadays it isn't that much waiting for the moment the mail arrives. It is more trying to deal with the dataflows one has coming his/her way. If one isn't on the Internet at all, this doesn't make sense at all. Maybe I will send a few prints of this text to mail-art friends that aren't online, and mention the address they can write to (TAM, P.O.Box 10388, 5000JJ Tilburg, Netherlands). That way I can see what I think of this. Maybe someone else even prints out this text for me and passes it allong. All communication-forms are possible nowadays.

Michael Leigh wrote that he is actually learning about HTML now too. It is learning a new language that one hasn't learned as a child. My stdents nowadays all know about HTML, and mostly already have their own sites. If not, they just get an assignment to learn how to do that and to send in the link where they have published the site. How to learn about HTML? Not that difficcult. Just go to www.google.com and look for the words HTML COURSE. You can easily find out all there is to know. How to stich a postage stamp on an envelope is something different. Some students I have don't even send out envelopes at all. They hate the slow communication and want all done by e-mail.

A 'nice' future we have ahead............

Ruud

In Heidelberg again

As most of you might know, I am often in Heidelberg. What an interesting aspect of Internet: things just continue when you are abroad. I have access to my e-mail, access to my bank-account, access to my online sites (just updated a few texts on the www.fluxusheidelberg.org site), and it does feel strange to communicate without having a fixed location for the receivers of my texts.

Next week I will be in the Netherlands for a few days again, so I will see what the snail-mail has brought me. That is still my favourite, although the last years the amount of "garbage" has increased. Maybe I am too critical........

Ruud

Tracing someone on the Internet

It has become quite easy to trace someone on the Internet. If I only look at the details I leave on several places on the Internet, it is quite easy for 'researchers' to find these traces. A small sample is the Update list of the Fluxus Heidelberg Center, of which I am the webmaster. If someone looks at that place, he/she can discover that a new calendar-file is just uploaded, and all details Litsa Spathi and I did for the Center can be found there.

Also the online-groups, forums, E-mailing-lists. They are all stored somewhere and the search-engines pick up the information. Just 'mine the internet' (as they call it) and you can find lots of clues of what someone has been up to these last years.

There occurs a problem as well. Some people think that all the data will actually stay on the Internet for indefinite time. That isn't so. When a firm that hosts a site goes bankrupt, all information is lost. If someone doesn't pay for the hosting of information, it too vanishes. That happens quite often these days. Lots of broken links on the Internet.

Some Search-engines do keep Cache-data online. They have stored the information they found on their own server. But how many data do they keep. For how many years? A college of mine once made a joke: In 2080 a researcher will find out that there is almost no information available from the timeperiode 1998 till 2050, because all the information on the Internet wasn't permanently stored on paper....... Yes, all those CD's people burn themselves only have a limited life-time. We might loose all we produce, and only the printouts have a longer life than we do.

Do we care? Is what we do now worth saving?

Ruud

Summer in Mail-Art Land

July has started. Summervacation. For some of the mail-artists it is the time to catch up with the piles of envelopes that are lying around and are still waiting to be answered.

Yes, I admit, I too have a basket of mail-art near my table with envelopes waiting to be answered. It can be frustrating to have such a basket. Because I realize that when I answer all that is in the basket, it triggers the receivers to send in new mail to fill that basket again.

So I normally don't force myself these days to empty that basket. If the time is right I will answer one of those envelopes. If not, time just passes by and no harm is done anyway.

Ruud