OP-ED

What's new? Nothing?

Being a document is not easy – it comes with responsibilities. The text needs to extend its formal boundaries and include within itself its environment, its context, its synchronous reference frames. Zeitgeist, after all, is only interpretable as juxtaposed to its hosting time.

A timestamp, that is what a document needs; that is what differentiates it from a personal note, or a user manual for a washing machine. A timestamp is not only justified; it is downright a necessary feature of any imprint of human (co)existence.

A noteworthy timestamp: 14th February 1990. This is when the Voyager 1 space probe took one last photo of planet Earth, before leaving our solar system. The probe turned around, and took the photo from a distance of 6,055 million kilometres.

Outside of a Camera Obscura

Our eyes are the dark of the sun

I advise you to look up the photo, named Pale Blue Dot. I also advise you to check out on youtube what Carl Sagan, the man responsible for turning Voyager 1 had to say about that pale blue dot. I actually downright urge you to do that.

And then, check out the date to the left of this text: 20th February 2023. That’s today. And now you can connect… well… the dots. Fitting.

by Zoltan Tajti