From Computer Tyme Support Wiki

I have some bad news

Hi Cindy,

Hate to ruin your Monday morning but I have some bad news. I have stage 4 lung cancer and the odds are not with me. I'm slowly telling the world and realizing the the problem with having so many friends is that I'm making a lot of people very sad. And that is very difficult for me to do.

I'm dealing with it about as well as can be expected, maybe a little better than that. My needs are covered for now, but dealing with rolling out the information. Please pass this email on to the staff there. I'm somewhat concerned about getting too much response at once. There is no specific time frame for me yet but stage 4 lung is almost always fatal and it's more likely months and not years.

I have a lot of friends who are offering to take care of me. I have a paid for house, some savings, and I'm still doing well off my spam filtering business. I am going to be looking for someone to take over my small techno empire in the hopes of keeping my web sites and the people who I host for online. While I plan to put up a good fight if I get 2 years that would be considered a win. Taking over my empire would be a great opportunity for the right person and I need to find someone to do that. I am unfortunately really good at what I do and might be tricky getting someone to take that over.

I have lived a good life. I have done more than most people have done in 100 lifetimes. At the age of 60 I was already down to my last 1/4 tank so if I don't get the last 20 years I really have little to complain about. At this point my goals are to upload what's left of me to the web, which is the afterlife in my world. I have to finish up certain philosophical projects with my Church of Reality, which, interestingly enough might lead to a solution for the control problem for Artificial Intelligence. (Something I need to finish writing up.)

Oddly enough the idea of being dead doesn't worry me. And that might be the denial speaking. However the process of getting there is going to be overwhelming. And it's been just a week since I found out. And I'm exploring the idea that there might even be an upside to being terminal. Maybe new opportunities will open up.

I do want to say that working at EFF was some of the best times of my life and I really appreciate having had that opportunity. The internet is the new nervous system of humanity and is therefore sacred space, not just in a religious sense, but in a Reality based sense. To protect it is to protect the essence of humanity itself. The Internet is our common mind and it is the core of who we are as a human species. (Note to legal team, I think there is a legal argument opportunity in this statement.)

A person's story is everything they do from the moment they are born to the moment they die. And then your story is the effect you had on advancing the evolution of life from what we were, to what we are, to what we will become. So my story will become part of the story of humanity, which is part of the story of life on this planet, and part of the story of the universe. And with the internet the essence of who I am and what makes my existence have meaning will be preserved.

I have always believed that if a person decides to "own their story" and choose to live a life worth living that when they are faced with the end of their personal existence it would be much easier. And now that I am there I can say it is definitely true. I have not lived a perfect life and looking back there are quite a few things where I could have made a better choice. But at this point I'm feeling unusually positive about my situation as my last adventures unfold.

While I have spent much of my life writing software for cyberspace I have also written quite a bit of software for meat space. This email is an example of that. Meat space is coded in ideas and philosophies and I'm hoping in the time I have left to see what else I can accomplish. Facing death definitely sharpens the mind so I'm going to take advantage of that.

I suppose I'll wrap this up here as I can ramble on forever. And forever isn't as quite long as it used to be.

Marc Perkel /root