The Practice and the Product

You used to think of books as institutional memory.

If only your words could be captured on paper and bound into volumes, your ideas would be protected.

And then you tried to store those words in digital databases, easily carried with you, available to all who can access this wider web.

You planted trees, imagining that they would last centuries after your demise.

When the trees fell over, you made art.

But even that art is quickly eaten away by bugs and wind.

In the end, all that remains: ash and splinters. 

So let us return to the important practices, not because their products will outlast us, but because the process will sustain us.