The Weight of the Internet
Finally the Internet will be populated almost entirely by ghosts. It will be impossible to do anything online, check one’s bank statement, watch a movie, check e-mail, etc., without running into some piece of script still functioning years after its author’s death. Large tracts of the web will be occupied by online shrines to the departed, where family members have left notes: “Oh, God, Jimmy, I miss you so much. Every time I look at
the bread in our kitchen I miss you.” Most of these family members are also gone. Some of them have
their own shrine pages up. Others still exist only in the words they left on someone else’s page. Each individual’s words, pictures, script, etc., do not add up to much; but the combined weight of death on the Internet is overwhelming . . .
