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modern post-snailmail reality
Thursday, October 18 2001
I was feeling okay today, and didn't mind taking Sally for a walk in the Vale of Cashmere. While I was there, it crossed my mind that someone should publish a populist Islamic tract targeted at surfer dudes called Radical Islam: All About Allah and His Prophet Dude Muhammad. On the cover it would feature a surfer out on the waves, kneeling on his surfboard in the direction of Mecca.
With my connection to machines in Santa Monica finally restored, I had a busy day of making up for lost workdays. Part of this time, however, I spent angered and demoralized after finding that a small but crucial part of my work had been destroyed by some ill-advised overwrite of the development environment.
In the evening, I decided to look at some bills I've received in the mail in the past several days, and in the course of handling them, I started developing a psychosomatic scratchiness in my throat. I started thinking about envelopes packed with anthrax spores circulating through the US Postal system, contaminating offices, trucks, people, and other random mail along the way. Perhaps this mail in my hands had been contaminated, tossed at some point into a bin with a sack of mail from Trenton. It wasn't a very pleasant thought. What if the US Mail system was completely contaminated? Would we, the people, be told? Or would we be told what we're being told, that everything is alright and we shouldn't panic.
Then again, when you figure how much my chance of being killed in a car accident has decreased since moving to New York, I can probably accept the additional risk of anthrax spores on my envelopes. Still, it's a nice thing there's email. It's probably only a matter of time before our legal system wakes up to the modern post-snailmail reality and begins accepting digital signatures as a substitute for the real thing.
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