On UUIDs

In an earlier time, pre-UUID, a mysterious snake oil salesman quietly enters the village and performs his act. Encore after encore, only with no standing applause. Only silence and gradual begrudgement.

Rumor spreads the character is a crook and understandings to nullify business with him spread. The charade is up and another crook outed. The village one degree better off.

This is all but an unfamiliar tune for our salesman, who follows this curtain call soundtrack as a stage instruction to close the suitcase…

And to open it in the next town over. Encores to curtain call, just to another Hello World!.

Enter modern time - UUIDs are the norm: SSNs, Tax IDs, Phone #s, Google/Apple/$BigCo IDs, IEMIs, ad nauseum.

All of them contextually useful, but each are holistically imperfect at keeping our cunning and ambitious synthetic snake oil salesmen at bay. Powers eternally at odds

But what of the town fool, folly, fuckup? A well-intentioned fellow, who perhaps fell into the wrong habits or a fictionally lucrative business deal, who - after much time spent in suffering - looks to a new pasture. Not a greener one, but one of brown loam foreign to their likeness. Where it is not a second chance, but a second first chance.

In an earlier time, this is one weary travel away.

In the modern, I’m afraid this may cease to exist. Soon if not already, the UUIDs that hardly keep pace a step behind our sly salesman, run circles around our fools, follys and fuckups who lack the wit, industry, or effects to find that brown loam. It’s all yellowed grass with eyes keen of these well-known, but locally ‘new’ boots.

We have little right to reinvent oneself. Debauchery, whether by circumstance or by compulsion, by nature or by accident - is all treated the same. Reputations instantiated, then ossified over time. Maleability faltering as UUIDs perform unfathomable bookeeping on our goods and bads.

Is our attempt at keeping synthetic snake oil at bay compromising something more sacred, and more necessary to lives well-lived? Perhaps.