the electronic Denktafel

It’s called a Denktafel in German, though I’ve forgotten (if I ever knew) what the official term is in French. I’m referring to those plaques on buildings, found especially in Europe, that commemorate that some famous person lived here or did something important here.

This evening I saw the one for Descartes that I’ve been past dozens of times, the Hemingway one that I’ve somehow never noticed before, and then a friend and I failed in our effort to find one for the Curies over near where they lived (there has to be one, we just didn’t find it). One of the most moving in Paris, which I again saw last week, is on the café where Jean Jaurès was assassinated in 1914, on the rue Montmartre not too far to the north of Les Halles. There’s even one of Dante down in the Latin Quarter, since he seems to have been here during his exile (some hold that he went as far as Oxford).

With the growth of electronic handheld devices, it would be quite easy to allow everyone to put up their own virtual commemorative plaques. That might sound like a lot of information noise, and it would leave lots of room for stupidity as well. But if everyone were allowed at the ages of, say, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and so on, to put up one virtual plaque in the city where the most important thing happened to them in the past decade, that could make for fascinating walks around the city for all of us. There would be flashes of joy and tragedy on every street.

Of course, these sorts of things inevitably attract jerks, and there would have to be some supervision of the database. But if you spend some time in a city like this, then you’ll have your own important memories in various places. And if you walk around with people who have lived here even longer, and if you’re a good listener and willing to draw them out a bit, they’ll start sharing their own sentimental feelings about this or that street or café as well. No one ever wants to listen to people talk about that sort of thing, so if you’re the type who does, you’ll quickly start to hear some interesting material even if you don’t know them especially well.

Even if it were the dramatic locations of complete strangers, there could be some fascinating and sometimes heart-wrenching reports. The bland café table you just passed could be where someone finally figured out his or her life after years of struggle, or perhaps where they learned the crushing news of a premature death. It would add relief and drama to one’s experience of a city.