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Facebook: A Virtual Bookmark In Time
David Veverka was one of my first friends on facebook. These days I don’t know the majority of the people I’m connected to, but back in 2005, it was just a small network of folks who were really friends. He’s had this profile picture up for three years, but it’s a good choice considering he pursued marine mammalogy. We met when I was in graduate school at UMaine because David ran the Society for Conservation Biology. He had a coveted NSF Fellowship and was also the only person who volunteered to help dissect sea cucumbers for my thesis research. The other lab assistants were work study students, but David just thought cukes were interesting and wanted to learn more about them–despite that it involved a three hour commute to the marine lab. Needless to say that even back then, I knew he would go on change the world by saving biodiversity and educating the next generation about why it matters.
But on May 8, 2006, the makeshift bomb that exploded near his truck in Iraq didn’t know what he was supposed to go on and accomplish. Neither did the people who built it.
David lives on in the hearts and memories of those he touched. He also still lives on the internet. Facebook continues to alert me about his birthday and his photo often appears on the left side of my screen. His profile remains static–aside from an occasional wall message–while I’ve aged three years and changed a great deal. And in many ways my page has documented the transition from sea cucumbers to science policy and journalism.
For centuries, people have pieced together the past through art, oral tradition, yellowing photographs, and fading print. In my own family, much of the story has been lost. Today, social networking sites allow us to leave deeper footprints behind. We’ve only been walking this boundless beach for a short time, but I wonder how the space will evolve as the internet generation matures. We’re already living on and in the net, and when we leave this world, we no longer cease to exist. Perhaps someday my great-grandchild will explore the ancient technology of the 21st century and find The Intersection while searching for clues about me. And sure, servers go down, systems crash, and it won’t be long before my macbook air becomes obsolete. But like David, many of us are leaving a virtual bookmark in time.
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Links to this Post
- Gabo López Calva :: Lost loved ones in Facebook :: April :: 2009 | April 22, 2009
- Pictures of You: Internet Immortality | The Starnes | April 22, 2009
- On Motherhood, Identity, And Feminism | The Intersection | Discover Magazine | May 21, 2009
I am sorry for David and his family. Sadly, I doubt if even the men who trained David really knew what they wanted to accomplish. But his memory nonetheless lives on. Ideas as you know are even more timeless; that is one of the great advantages of doing science. And ideas live on and become a part of our daily lives even after we have long forgotten their sources. 33% of products in daily life are based on quantum mechanics, and the Uncertainty Principle will keep on governing the lives of every single human being who ever lives on this planet even if he or she has never heard of Werner Heisenberg.
I am so sorry to learn of what happened to your friend David. He had so much promise, and it is a personal loss and life cut short.
As you say, he leaves a virtual bookmark in time.
This is a touching and insightful post. I experience the same phenomenon with a Facebook friend- former student of mine- who died in a car accident. What is fascinating beyond the virtual life bookmark of which you speak, is the virtual shrine that such sites can become. People can post on these pages and share their memories of the person. I suspect that this can be therapeutic and might is becoming a new standard method of grieving for the internet generation. This student’s page gets comments and remarks nearly every day still and there is a veritable explosion of activity when the birthday reminders come up each year. The question is whether someone will archive and track these things. The Federal government has its internet archive (at least I think it is a Federal program) but will people be able to locate and track and explore this phenomenon (and others) to any great degree. Will it be possible to examine how this helps those who are grieving? Does it even matter (to study it I mean)?
Thank you for sharing the story of your friend.
Great post Sheril. A real tribute to an American hero.
Sorry to hear about your loss. He sounds like he was a really great guy.
That’s so sad – but what was he doing in a war zone?
I’m sorry to hear about your friend as well, but I hope that this really gets readers to think about the thousands of lives lost in that senseless war. I was there in 2004-2005 and we lost several people. I have to wonder what each of them would have gone on to contribute if their lives hadn’t been cut short, one of them was a 19 year old woman, another a 31 year old father of 4. Of course, there were tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian lives lost, what would they have eventually contributed? There is no way for us to know. How many David’s have we lost? One is too many. I can only hope that the memory of David and everyone other victim of the war galvanize us to make better decisions as a society in the future. I don’t hold out much hope, but hope nonetheless.
This is a moving post… Sorry to hear about your loss, Sheril.