In the early days of personal computing, software engineers amused themselves by hiding messages or unsuspected features into their programmes. What began as jokes between peers became a way to reward loyal users with additional value. These virtual prizes came to be known as easter eggs, after the tradition of hiding chocolate treats for small children to find. The idea persists, despite concerns about potential security breaches and a sense of expectation that, in solidifying something quintessentially light, takes a little of the shine off a generous idea.
Unfortunately, you’ll find no easter eggs here: I don’t have the necessary skills. Worse, you will find frustrating dead ends, either because I’ve closed my other websites, or just because the Internet is always changing. I ran a test that turned up 4,732 broken links, mostly pointing to websites belonging to external organisations. I’ll remove or update them when I spot them, but it’s an unending and thankless task, so please accept my apologies if you meet a 404 error message.
Adding work here that was once available on my other sites takes time. I’ve also realised that people have sometimes referenced my posts in print and I’m wondering what, if anything, to do about that. There are problems of scale (Parliament of Dreams had 200,000 words), temporality (posts often respond to past circumstances) and value (are they worth keeping anyway?). One solution would be to make some of that work available here in PDF format, but even that would involve a lot of reading and decision-making, and I want to put my energy elsewhere – into A Selfless Art.
Hibernating, sheltering in place, lying fallow, I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking since last autumn – learning too, and A Selfless Art will be the better for it. I’ve not yet found the book’s true voice but I hope it will come in the process of writing. As before, I’ll use this site for that, thinking in public, testing form and content for coherence. So, after months when I’ve written nothing of consequence, I’m coming home. There’ll be no need to hide such easter eggs as I have gathered.
François Matarasso 
