Inside
a Niche
It
was this gee-whiz internet signed HTTP:// and it was looking
for killer applications with multiple air guns. The home pages
were screaming to know the reason for this school trip. Java
phones had a sentimental streak for geeks and the comdex computer
showed the URLS where life had once been wild, brawling and
pretty free. Nobody was calling for open standards in the bedrooms
anymore.
An Exponential Curve
It
was cool to zip e-mail across the world in seconds like dew
sagging into a tent. The bartender would yell, " MUDS,
you flaming scum! " just across the street were the fantasy
dopple-gangers lived. Usnet would double every fifty-three years.
Biological growth was tooting its horn in little rickety alleys.
Upscale and over-educated people were kneeling on the earth
floor and coming on-line with woodstoves for the winter.
Habitats
There
was no CEO. There was no there, anywhere for playing guitars
to sing along to. It was simply voracious free expression and
a nameless bunch of rules for moving data around. Anywhere from
my Stockton to my South Dakota.
Through a Modem
And
the young man told him about the lights of project X burning
out in the frightening fields of Kathmandhu. Jerusalem and Sofia
were twanging sadly across the hills. So was Berlin and a tooth-brush.
Their resonance was deep and rich. Super-eight movies barked
in the cool night air. This was precisely what he always dreamed
of doing..
Forget the Copyright
The
damn fools stared at hourglass cursors that looked like handsome
queer boys on journeys to Hollywood and other purely rugged,
exotic kinds of destinations. The beautiful gals with itchy
fingertips cooed with exquisite pleasure and this very keen
movie star stamina. Lonesome pigs were taking showers on the
internet. All of them just shouting " Don Ameche! "
The Fax from Hell
The
soldier calculated his numbers on the back of an envelope, there
were a few minor accidents at least once a minute. There was
no soap, but there was an ocean-load of serious investments
on the day of protests. Fat screaming women ran across the boulevards
with phone calls, e-mail, and a careless, free
abandon.
Download
It
was nothing, but words, images, and sounds that seemed to be
chilling the exchange of data. Everyone was rushing off towards
the farthest palm pilot. Ideas got scrambled, faxes were lost,
and beyond that was the desert of nothingness strewn with cryptographer
keys and abandoned messages saying things were getting S-L-O-W-E-R.
In Just a Few Seconds
Nine
thousand modems were making freaky love to this heat death at
a party, shoving bits into the wires, running out of human organs
and getting cancer. Bushy bayou leaves competed for bandwidth
while mooning over their navels. It never seems to finish. In
an old dream, jackpots disappeared leaving only this simple
signal, " Host contacted: waiting for a reply. "
In just Minutes
The
old bulls were prone to glitches and seemed to enjoy landing
on old driveways. " Ah, let go, " I said. It was just
wires, silicon, and a superb collection of human brains and
emotions waiting for the next unemployment check making billions
with virtual tubes and coffee stains on the net, putting bricks
on the flagman, knowing it was a hype that couldn't last.
How about a Few Hours?
It
was bad news for the neo-Luddites always getting sick and tired
of the old mobs, the low-techers threw jujitsu sauces at the
hot web pages. They flipped over the racy cable modems down
in New Orleans. It was a very good trick for cyber-space coverage,
its bony face thrusting towards this violent life. Top, down
organizations were really pumping and sweating . These were
the new rules
of human consensus reality.
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