Digital Immortality

Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr

Seeking immortality is nothing new.

According to Greek myth, Tithonus was granted immortality by Zeus at the request of his wife, Eos-- but because she forgot to ask for eternal youth, Tithonus grew to be a very old, shriveled man (and maybe a cicada?).

Even in the Disney classic, Aladdin, one of the provisions that Genie puts forth is that he cannot bring people back from the dead-- "it's not a pretty."

More recently, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named/Professor Quirrell seek immortality through unicorn blood and Nicholas Flamel's stone-- and we all know how unsuccessful they were at that.

The success rates of attaining immortality, as evident by these fine gents, is slim. Albeit a fine dream, it's pretty complicated to reverse or stop the inevitable circle of life. (Cue Lion King music.) Going back to Greek myth, the Three Fates will, at some point, cut you out of existence.

Men and women cannot fight time. However, art does not exist under the same rule.

Art is certainly a familiar tool that artists emply to escape the contrainsts of human life on Earth-- time being the most significant constraint of all. For instance, in his apostrophe Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats uses language to perpetuate a world of art in which human figures are “for ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young."

In the poem, life is immortalized on the urn through pictures. The urn can be preserved, unlike humans, so the story of the people on the urn is similiarly preserved. In turn, the story of the people on the urn is doubly preserved in Keats' text.

Ahh, the power of words!

While traditionally this process of immortalization has been done in plays, poems, novels, treatises, and the like, online/digital writing is accomplishing the same task by cementing thoughts and stories and ideas through words. In fact, it could be said that ideas or people are more immortal online because so many more people access online material than printed material.

Although I'm not sure Keats would agree that online blogging or writing is an art form, I think he would be so proud of this perpetuation of life.