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From	jaromil <jaromil@kyuzz.org>
Date	Sat, 20 Oct 2001 12:21:46 +0200
Subject	[HaCkmEeTiNg] lost and found

Lost and Found

an open letter by Jonathan Alex Gold



Dear America,

I am writing to you in the hopes that you can post this notice in your lost and found 
section. You see, I seem to have lost my identity.

To be quite honest, I'm not sure as to when I can last remember being in possession of it, 
although I'm pretty sure that at one time or other I was. I try to think back to the last 
place I had it, the last time I remember using it, which is what I generally do when I 
feel I've misplaced something, but this approach has been to no avail.

In fact, I'm not really sure if ``lost" is the correct word. It could be that it was 
mistakenly taken, that maybe someone just walked off with it, thinking it was theirs. I'm 
just not sure. This must sound terribly confusing, and I can understand. As you can 
probably guess, I'm a little bit shaken by the whole affair myself. Let me see if I can 
explain.

First of all, I am sure that I don't have it anymore. I realized this just recently, when 
I thought about the ways that I'm portrayed in the mainstream American media, or about the 
responses people give when I say that I study Computer Science. You see, the image I see 
on the news which is claimed to be me, well, it really isn't. The same is true with what 
people say about me. When I saw this, I realized that there was a problem, that I was no 
longer in possession of my own identity.

You can imagine my surprise.

Here all along I thought I was a scientist. I thought I was a philosopher. I thought I was 
a mathematician, studying algorithms and their proofs in the grand tradition of Euclid and 
Gauss and, of course, al Khwarizimi. I could have sworn that this is what I do. And yet, 
from what I can gather from the reports, and from what people tell me about myself, that's 
not it at all.

It turns out that I'm a dot-com engineer. I was dumbfounded to learn this. Contrary to 
what I thought I was doing, I've actually been busy at work building something like "the 
new e-cyber-inter-web-world of tomorrow's technology of the present of the future." If 
you're unnerved by the fact that this phrase makes no sense to you, I can sympathize. 
After all, I'm apparently the one building it, and I don't even know what it is.

In addition to this, it seems that, when I'm not busy working on "tomorrow's technology 
today", I'm hard at work all through the night in a small windowless room drinking tons of 
coffee and pursuing my dream of becoming the next Bill Gates, the next boy genius Napster 
start up internet toting computer whiz from next door, set to jump with software I wrote 
in my garage and rise to the head of a new empire, where I singlehandedly and in bona fide 
multithreaded fashion strike the ladies dead with my client-server savvy while wooing 
banks and various monied interests into my den of Dungeons and Dragons posters and 
subculture chat rooms where I tech-talk them into forking over their green with the 
promise of the next great i.p.o.-Nasdaq corn-fed sensation while simultaneously plotting 
to break in to their mainframes so I can get from there to the State Department in a zany 
madcap wily hacker plan to appoint Mickey Mouse as the national security envoy to 
Pakistan. I had no idea I was so busy and industrious.

I'm tired just from reading about myself.

I have lost a hold of my identity. It seems that it is now owned by Microsoft and Ebay, by 
Time and Newsweek, by Dateline and Intel. I try to think back, wondering if maybe I sold 
it to them and subsequently forgot about it. I've searched my soul for some record of the 
transaction, of some outright bill of sale, and I can't seem to find one. I've been trying 
to recall any particular times when maybe some misunderstanding could have occurred and 
these kinds of companies became under the impression that they the were the owners of my 
identity.

Maybe it was no particular moment.

Maybe I just got complacent, got used to leaving my front door unlocked, to being 
non-confrontational, to backing down.

Maybe people realized that I was an easy target.

Maybe the word got out that I was starved for attention and admiration, that I'd take 
whatever I could get.

Maybe people started talking, saying that I'd trade my warm woolen rags for imitation 
leather.

Maybe the word on the street was that I'd sell my identity for some press.

Maybe I did.

It could even have been something else. Maybe it was when I took a fat check to build 
shoddy houses, to raise these rackety rusting digital ghettos, that I became associated 
with the companies that paid me to do it, my identity being absorbed in the process. If I 
take a moment to think about it, it makes sense, right?

If I help build a house for a tyrant, then I am complicit to the rise of tyranny.

But you know, I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I really didn't know it would 
turn out that way. Still, I know that doesn't change it. Not really. If that was the case, 
that I'm somehow a part of the forfeiture of my identity, then I can't really reclaim it 
straight away. Yup, if that was the case, then all I can do is just try and start learning 
from my mistakes, and hopefully earn back my identity. Okay, I'll have to think on that a 
little.

Maybe that's what happened to my identity. Maybe that's what I'll have to do. Actually, I 
guess I haven't lost my identity. I guess I just got lazy and didn't take care of it, 
allowed it to rust and decay, to be steadily scratched at by weeds and picked at by 
vultures.

Oh well. Sorry. My fault.

I apologize for sending you this letter in error. You can just imagine how embarrassed I 
must be. Here I am whining and sobbing and asking you if you've seen my identity, when all 
the while it was out there, right in front of me. Someone must have come upon it and taken 
it, seeing it in a state of disrepair and abandonment. They probably figured I had no need 
for it, that I wasn't really using it anymore, that they could have it. Turns out the 
problem was really pretty simple. Probably the solution is simple as well -- I should just 
stand up.

I should just stand up, and take back my identity.

Sincerely,

A young computer scientist

--
jaromil //dyne.org - GPG fingerprint and ___id____
6EEE 4FB2 2555 7ACD 8496  AB99 E2A2 93B4 6C62 4800
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