Once Upon a Time on the Internet....

Feeling generally disgruntled with Google, Microsoft et al and the ways the computer experience has changed since first I owned a home computer, I began reminiscing.

October 2001 it was when I first dipped my toes into the internet pool. I'd used a computer at work for several years, but we were not linked to the internet, that was to be new and exciting territory. Because I was short of space at home I bought a rather avant garde all-in-one computer, made in London by a small independent outfit. It has taken more than 10 years for the big boys to start selling something similar. My computer worked fine most of the time, but as it was experimental it needed some fine tuning, had to be shipped back to the manufacturer for repair twice over a period of 3 years. Windows ME (millennium edition) was the operating system I used then, it was not well-thought of by most would-be experts who swore by Win98. ME worked for me.

Initially I got myself caught in the AOL net - AOL was a big deal back then, and was probably introduced to me as part of the Windows package. For a while it seemed to me that AOL was the internet. There were newsrooms, chat rooms, message boards, and other seminal social networking bits and pieces. I became an accepted member of a small discussion and writing group who produced some amusing narratives, parodies, games and pieces of prose. That was fun! Gradually I found my way around the net, discovered Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon, along with a few astrology websites and message boards.

I did eventually break loose from the AOL enclave and found my way around what in those days seemed more like a village or small town. It now seems like a teaming, screaming over-populated metropolis, so I choose to remain inside fairly narrow confines - in real life too. It's a jungle out there in both the real and virtual world, the natives can be restless and ruthless, also often idiotic, and not in a good way.... off their trolleys, out there circling Jupiter!

Too much of a good thing?

I suppose the net's huge international metropolis is the same as any real life metropolis: people tend to stay within their own neighbourhoods and communities much of the time, venturing out only on special occasions for a particular purpose. So, in fact, the net is only as wide and as deep as one's desired reach. Even though I was not around at the very beginning, seeing it grow so rapidly has been a wee bit disconcerting. Main big-name players back then were friendly, seemed akin to good next door neighbour types, always helpful, always ready for fun, always there when needed. Those same big names have now become overbearing, dictatorial, loud and demanding.

Such is life!

If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.
― Dorothy Gambrell, Cat and Girl Volume I

The internet is just a world passing notes around a classroom.
― Jon Stewart
(I'd relate that description, more precisely, to Facebook.)


Distracted from distraction by distraction
― T.S. Eliot
Yep!

Attention is the limited resource on the internet - not disk capacity, processor speed or bandwidth.
― Mills Davis
Definitely!