Thoughts about Alan Kotok at the occasion of a gathering in his honor

Shortly before Judie's passing, I sent Alan a DVD of the first
season of the television sitcom "Arrested Development." I wanted
to make him laugh, but I told him that it was to make him cool;
most of the guys on the Systems Team had enjoyed the series and
frequently cited it. Alan appreciated the gesture but confessed
that he didn't believe watching the show was enough to make him
cool.  What Alan may not have realized is that the Systems Team
(and most likely the whole W3C Team) always thought Alan was
deeply cool. What made him cool was what he had accomplished and
his vast knowledge: of computers, of trains, of music and organs,
of telephones, and all that made him an authentic geek,
irreverent, fair, and full of humor.

Thanks to that humor, he did not openly object to my periodic
imitations of his voice.  At a museum in Budapest I pulled Judie
aside and asked her opinion of the imitation. Judie responded with
a perfect rendering of Alan's distinctive walk and I admitted
defeat.

Alan visited me in Chicago one weekend in December 2004. He
explained that he needed one more flight before year's end to
ensure the continuation of some elite frequent flyer status. I
can't tell you how honored and excited I was that, to fulfill
that important mission, he chose to come to Chicago. Judie had
another commitment that weekend, and so Alan came alone. We took
in a play: "Arcadia," by Tom Stoppard.

In the play, sixteen-year-old student Thomasina expresses to her
tutor Septimus a deep sadness about the tragedy of loss of
knowledge. She is talking about Cleopatra, whom she calls "the
Egyptian noodle" when she exclaims:

 "The Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who
 burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine
 for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it? All
 the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by
 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - thousands of poems -
 Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's
 ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?"

The great library of Alexandria, precursor to the Web.  

I had secretly hoped to write a book with Alan on the
technological and social history of the telephone. When talking
about the telphone (or trains, or organs, or computers, ...)
Alan illuminated his explanations with personal anecdotes and
historical context. I will not have the opportunity to learn from
Alan and work with him on this dream book. At times I cannot
sleep for grief.

But Septimus reassures the anxious Thomasina by explaining that
we manage our grief by counting our blessings:

 "Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from
  Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than
  for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson
  book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick
  up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms,
  and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The
  procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the
  march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be
  lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece
  by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient
  cures for diseases will reveal themselves once
  more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will
  have their time again."

In one of the play's threads, Thomasina discovers fractals 100
years before their time. But when she perishes in a fire, her
mathematical insights are lost before anybody understands the
significance.

Septimus was right, and fractals were "rediscovered."  Though I
grieve the loss of the insights of my tutor, I am confident we
will pick them up again. That Alan and Judie have brought such
dear people together makes it seem all the more inevitable.

 - Ian
-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447