| 1999-09-09 |
|
Two
score and seven years ago young programmers brought forth on this
cyberspace, an old date format,
engraved in Hollerith cards,
and dedicated to the proposition that all centuries are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great repair war, testing whether our software, or any software so conceived, can long endure. We are met on a great gateway of that war. We have come to connect to a portion of that network, as a final resting place for those who gave their nights and days that that network might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not window--we can not expand--we can not bias--these years. The brave programmers who struggled here, exposing the worst code to the light of day, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or subtract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what was repaired here, but it will never cease using the remediation made here. It is for us the users, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which has so far been nobly advanced. We here highly resolve that these programs shall not have been repaired in vain--that this software, under Internet, shall have a new birth of function--and that networks of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from cyberspace. |
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