Thursday, May 02, 2013

BPN 1635: My last handwritten letter

Yesterday I looked back on the 20th anniversary of the XS4ALL, one of the first Dutch ISPs that  opened its servers for consumers twenty years ago. Yesterday my (maybe last) handwritten letter was published online in the project Life needs Internet.

I met the digital artist of this project  at Graz (Austria) last year at the award ceremony of the European Youth Award. In his project, Jeroen van Loon asks people to send a handwritten letter to him with their first acquaintance and experience with Internet. My letter is four pages long and available on the Internet site Life needs internet.

For this posting I copied the first two paragraphs of my letter entitled From a link to heaven to (wireless) internet.

On February 1, 1970 I stood on the quay of Hook off Holland. After four years U.S. I was back home. I came from the pleasant sub-Mediterranean climate of New Orleans into the extreme cold of the Netherlands. And this was not just the weather, but also because of the drastic change in my life.

From my 11th year I had spent my life in seminaries, boarding schools for students who were trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Life in these institutions was quite ascetic. From early morning to late evening they were engaged in communication with the invisible deity in the form of prayer, meditation, contemplation and rituals in between study. To my 25th year turned my life around spirituality or better yet a line with heaven.

Life needs Internet is not an invitation project. Anyone can submit a handwritten letter and describe how they became acquainted with the Internet or how Internet affects their daily life.

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