On Artifacts
Everything I have, I have, everything else is ethereal.
You might have arrogant thoughts on computer files,
you might prefer to avoid this abstraction, but I don't.
Because a file is the abstraction that allows me to posses
something, it does not matter what's in the file, and that is
the beauty of it, it allows me to have the thing, and handle it as
an object, it allows me to give it a name, and put it in a place.
It allows me to duplicate it, to keep multiple copies of it.
It allows me to posses it, and to keep it physically with me.
I can put it on a medium and into a little wooden box, and I will
know WHERE it is.
Everything I have, is in files, and they are on my own storage media.
Multiple copies, and yes, what a hassle, nothing is automatic, nothing
is magic, it's just me, the luddite, copying things around, making
snapshots of file-systems, maintaining (badly) directory structures.
Powering up remote physical machines to save the backups of the backups.
What work it is.. But all my things are mine, and everything else
might as well not exist.
My only worry is how long I'm allowed this indulgence of keeping
things in my possession. Rather than storing them "somewhere", referenced
by some URL, and hoping, praying that the service continues to exist and
won't destroy them or lock me out.
It's a crime against humanity, this cloud, everyone taken captive to some
degree, and having no true choice lest they posses the fierce determination
and needed technical prowess to do it themselves.
It used to be, in the age of the vinyl record, the cassette tape
and the diskette, that everyone had this, by default, there were simply
no alternative.
Treat any artifact that you cannot save to a file as ethereal, for it is.
