In The Year 1984

Ah the good ol days.

I remember Oliver Wendell Jones, in trying to help his father (see the story in Bloom County), erasing said dad’s social security number and in doing so, erasing his father from the very face of existence.

I remember my very first grocery store bar code.  How fascinating!

I remember the 8 hours it took me to download America Online on my Mac SE (which I had painted to look like a block of granite) and the time it took me to explore AOL since I was sure, because I was so net ignorant, that this WAS the internet and that AOL had all there was to see.

Then I stumbled into a new sunlight and discovered other aspects of the internet--the whole shopping thing was iffy in those days and there were forums, always forums of hundreds of people, not a vegan among them because they always had some sort of BEEF about something.

Remember HTML Goodies!  Ol’ Joe had a website that was SO popular he made a kazillion dollars selling it to a bigger, better competitor (this has got to be some sort of foreshadowing)  and goes back to teaching in Goat Lick Arkansas or wherever it was he came from--he was a friendly sort too and you kind of felt you knew him.

That's the way it was in the good ol' days.  Back then it was da bomb--feel the love!

But alas, the internet is a distant and cold place full of unspeakable or should I say "unmentionable" things that would curl the hair off the head of old Lovecraft himself. 

It’s all there and still is--except for one thing and I would like to add this point to you for consideration:

I'm a guy who fixates on a subject, learns it the tip top of his Peter Principle, then moves on--people have referred to me as sort of a knowledge sponge and it was for this reason that I learned and did not master HTML (well the current version then) as I am sure almost all of you did at the time.

And I was helping people with websites...well because I could and they couldn't and they could pay me which brings me to a point:

THE NEW 1984

Ease of Use---no one has to program, write html code, understand client server issues OR deal with those Gods of the Ether-sky--IT Technicians.


Welcome to Pleasure Island, Pinocchio

While I miss some of the elements of days gone by--the new stuff is really nice--I don't have to think, I don’t have be technical and I can just write and write and write and we all write for the good of the Social Network.

Now if ONLY Google or any of these big boys could just put together a program that would allow them to peer at us from the other side--watching us live our lives and record and report it where necessary.

I’m just sayin…