My Internet History

The thing is, I can't remember not knowing about the Internet. They say it was created on January 1, 1983, when various smaller networks around the world agreed upon protocols to communicate with each other. My brother was writing code before he graduated from high school in 1981, as valedictorian. A little later in 1981 he went to MIT. So he would've told me about the Internet in 1983, and it would've failed to greatly rouse my interest. 

 

Then comes a long, long dry spell, as far as I am concerned. I tended to say stupid anti-computer things. You know: the way people often disparage things they know little or nothing about. 

From 1994 to 1997 I lived in NYC. It was then that I saw people, who hadn't been interested in computers before, suddenly become obsessed with the Internet. A young woman I know very slightly suddenly was wearing a cap with a big "SPAM" label on it, and I understood without talking to her about it that she was not involved with the canned meat: she was involved with the Internet version of junk-mail advertising. 

She was much more well-off financially than I was even before this. And somehow, from my first glimpse of that "SPAM" hat to this day, I have always been pretty sure that her involvement with spam made her a lot richer. 

Someone else I knew in NYC, who was about as poor as I was, which meant he was far too poor to own a computer of his own, got onto the Internet at a branch of the New York Public Library, and he became one of those people who were obsessed with the Internet, always speaking about it in an agitated, speedy manner. In 1995 a desktop computer cost anywhere between a little under a thousand dollars, to many thousands of dollars. 

I had a very difficult time imagining the Internet experience, despite my friend's agitated attempts at description, and despite a lengthy 1996 cover story in the German news magazine the Spiegel which contained many thumbnails of screenshots of homepages. At the time I was not familiar with the IT terms "thumbnail," "screenshot" and "homepage." The Spiegel described the Internet like this: "Vor allem [...] Projektionsfläche für Ängste, Wünsche und Visionen." ("Above all a place to project fears, visions and wishes.") So some things haven't changed very much since 1996.

In 1997 I moved from Manhattan to Columbus, Ohio, and saw the Internet for the first time, in a branch of the Columbus Public Library. And I got it: visually, it was very much like newspapers and magazines. Indeed, many newspapers and magazines made some or all of their content available for free on the Internet. Except for pictures. Pictures took a long time to load, and typically a newspaper or magazine wouldn't even try to put as many picture online as were in the print edition. A smaller percentage put everything online than do today, and Internet-only content from a paper publication was rather rare. 

But the mind-blowing part was the range of choice of content. Up until then I had to have a paper version, which, depending on where I was and where the thing was published, might take days or weeks or months to get to me. I could fight over the few copies at the library, or I could pay for my own subscription. 

Now I just had to do a simple search, and boom, I had some, in most cases, and in many cases all of the words of a magazine or newspaper. I was limited primarily by the range of things I could think of to search for.

And I could read more than one language, which gave me a significant advantage over some people in being able to use the  World Wide Web in a truly worldwide manner. (Skipping ahead to 2021: yeah, I know there's a difference between the Internet and the WWW. But I still couldn't explain that difference to anyone.)

I went from WebTV to WebTV Plus to an actual desktop computer of my own, in addition to the library Internet.

Laptop computers, in the 1990's, were much more expensive still than desktops. Compared to laptops today they were thick, and heavy, and their screens were small. 

But by that time, everybody had gotten used to computers constantly getting better and cheaper. You could get a model which was six months old for half of what it cost six months before, or you could wait a while until a brand-new one was better and cheaper, but it would be much cheaper still in a few months, and so on and so forth. The better smaller faster cheaper process is still going on, but it was more dramatic in the 1990's because the sums of money per computer were much bigger. It had been going on for a long time before the 1990's, but to me, that's the kind of history I have to look up, not the kind I remember. Except for having read a mention of the faster better smaller cheaper principle sometime between 1978 and 1984 in some magazine, in a description of something I was not interested in having.

Around 2000 or 2001, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur I knew at the time whipped out a laptop which would look ordinary today, but which at the time was less than half as thick and about twice as wide as any I had ever seen. I expressed my astonishment and admiration at this device. This guy was always very polite to me, but his wide eyes seemed to say that he was thinking, "Wow, what a hick!" or "I bet this poor schlub doesn't earn in a year what this laptop costs." 

And without a doubt he would've been right twice, but of course there's been two decades of better faster smaller (or thinner) cheaper since then...

He was on high-speed wireless Internet back then. Most of us were still on dial-up. Remember "Get off the Internet, I have to make a phone call!"?

Dial-up modems and land-line phones. 

After seeing that laptop computer from the future back around 2000, somehow I got used to the pace of change. It astonishes me less.

Dream Log: Coal Mining and Vaguely Progressive Action

I dreamed that my Mom was alive and was driving me cross-country through the rural Midwest. COVID didn't exist For some reason I decided to get out of the car and walk although it was raining and cold and I had no money on my person. I wasn't upset with Mom, that wasn't the reason I got out of the car. Very soon, because of the poor weather and having no cash, I felt rather silly for having gotten out of the car. 

 

After walking for a mile or so I came to a group of buildings. One of them had a very large open entrance with people streaming in and out, and I went in. The place was bustling with people dressed like me: work jackets, jeans, boots. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that I might not belong there.

There was a large, open-air underground area inside the entrance which looked like a mostly-empty warehouse. Crowds of people were engaged in some sort of meeting here. A passageway framed in timber led further down. Curious, I walked down, and soon it became clear that I was in a coal mine. Coal was everywhere. I walked through a large cavern dug through coal. The other people were more and more covered in coal, the further down I went.

I tried to get back out but I was lost, and it took me a long time to find the way back to above ground. People were quite friendly to me, obviously assuming I was just one more miner, and I wanted to get away from there before anyone figured out that I wasn't. At one point, ahead of me, a group of people mounted horses and rode away, throwing long, ominous shadows.

When I got back outside and back to the road, I saw a group of buildings on the other side. I approached them, hoping they were with another organization, not with the mine. 

They were part of a progressive Catholic organization which was protesting against the mine and trying to get miners to quit. Some of its members were former miners from the other side of the road.

So what we were doing there -- I was a part of it just about as soon as I arrived -- was successful. But it was vague. We worked together in groups of three or four to a dozen people each, working together on theories. Sort of like postmodern literary theories, except that they dealt with mining instead of literature. As soon as each project was completed, a small paperback volume appeared, and we got paid several dozen dollars each. So there was a modest capitalist motivation alongside the progressive one. 

Dream Log: Mystical Alternative Energy and Elizabeth Banks

I dreamed that a new energy source had been found. Some people, mostly women, were able to gather electricity, like batteries, while they were meditating, and then to discharge it into the grid. During the process of discharge they glowed until they looked like translucent plastic from head to toe. Each one glowed a different color. They were able to sense places where they could go, where there were large amounts of static electricity which they would be able to gather up. Science was not yet able to explain any of this. The people who gathered and distributed this energy came to be known as "batteries." Some compared the process to becoming impregnated giving birth.

By far the most powerful battery happened to be Hollywood actor, producer, director, writer and all-around genius and Nice Person Elizabeth Banks.

During the discharge process she glowed a vivid lime-green. She was able to put several gigawatt-hours into the grid per week. This made Ms Banks even more famous than she had already been. Many people who put most of their time and energy into trying to ensure that we all die from pollution and global warming -- also known as "Republicans" -- at first tried to discount the entire phenomenon of human batteries as a hoax. Then they tried to demonize Ms Banks as a Hollywood liberal. Banks shrugged and replied that she WAS a Hollywood liberal, and she didn't seem very demonic at all. Then the Republicans complained about coal miners and oilfield workers losing their jobs. You know how they do.

Being a human battery, sensing where the electricity was, traveling there, absorbing it while meditating and then discharging it into the grid, tended to be very much a full-time job. Most of the batteries had support teams handling the logistics for them. Banks' team was headed by Seth Rogan, with whom she had worked several times in show business. I was heading another logistics team, for a woman who wasn't famous at all. She glowed orange when she discharged. She could do several megawatt-hours a week.

The Banks operation gave all of their electricity away for free. Some smaller organizations, like the one I was working for, sold our electricity to utilities or consumer co-ops. Republicans, naturally, tried to play things up and make it seem as if Banks and Rogen and all those Hollywood types were taking money away from poor hardworking Murrkins like me and the lady who glowed orange. You know how they do.

Elizabeth Banks set up a conference for human batteries, where advice, organization and, yes, even money could be offered to those in need. 

I had hardly parked our team's mini-van when Seth Rogen was shoving me and yelling incoherently. Then he walked away as suddenly as he had appeared. Then he was there again, sobbing and apologizing and drunk. I assured him that he had not done any damage, and asked him what was upsetting him. He said that he was out of his head because he had feelings for Ms Banks, and they were unrequited. "You and me and billions of other people," I assured him. If I am correctly informed, Ms Banks has been with one guy for several decades. 

Dream Log: NYC: First, Scary Violence; Then, Dave Foley

I dreamed I was in NYC, in Grand Central Station. It was crowded, and I and all the other people were dressed as if it was the early 20th century, when the station was new. I was running up and down staircases and all over the station, for no apparent reason other than to have fun. 

But the fun mood suddenly disappeared when I heard people screaming. I ran in the direction of the screaming, and found an enormous man assaulting people. Before I could do anything, he turned on me and laid me flat on my back with one punch to the jaw. I got up and kept fighting, although I was frightened, and with good reason. This guy was big enough to make me feel small, which very rarely happens, and when it does, it makes me think about my possible effect on other people, and so I try to be extra-polite and gentle around others. He was over 7 feet tall and 500 pounds. At first glance it seemed he was a bit fat, but wherever I punched him, he was rock-solid. I was getting beaten pretty badly, but at least I and a couple of other people were distracting him from hurting other people, so we kept at it, until a bunch of NYPD officers arrived and ended it by shooting him 30 or 40 times, which didn't kill him, but slowed him down enough that he could be tied up with ropes (handcuffs didn't fit around his wrists), and dragged off to a hospital.

Then it was evening, and I and everyone else was wearing ordinary contemporary clothes, and I was hanging out with Dave Foley 

 

and a couple of other celebrities. I've forgotten who the others were. One was a woman, and they were all about Dave's age, which means they were all about my age too, and they were about as commercially successful as he is. 

In real life I met Dave Foley once, very briefly, in 1995, as I and a young lady were bar-hopping late at night in downtown Manhattan. I have no reason to believe that Dave Foley recalls meeting me, but in the dream, he knew my name and remembered talking to me and asked whether I and the woman were still together. I told him that the woman and I were never more than friends, and that I had managed to screw up the friendship pretty quickly, too. How had I done that? Dave asked. I told him that I didn't know, but that I had been drunk round-the-clock in those days, and that I suspected that might have had something to do with it.

They were all talking about the big-time show-biz projects they were working on. I felt self-conscious about my lack of success, and so I told a phony story about how I was playing bass in the studio for Dave Wakeling, former leader of the English Beat and General Public.

I made a remark to the woman which was intended to be funny, but she didn't laugh. She seemed very offended. 

The others all got up and walked away. I didn't know whether I was welcome to join them or not, so I stayed sitting where I was. The woman had left a big plate of some sort of appetizers, and I was very hungry, so I started eating them. Then I thought: what if they came back right away and saw that I had eaten her food. That would have made it all even more awkward. But they didn't come back.

Later that evening I met Dave Foley again, but not the others. Dave said that he was recording some music and invited me to join in on bass. I admitted to him that I had been lying to try to fit in, and that I had actually never played bass, and had no great ability on any instrument. 

The next morning I was wondering around midtown Manhattan, not knowing what I should do to survive and feeling helpless. I was wearing a suit which was new but not very expensive. I walked downtown, and came across a loud and festive Greek wedding reception which had spilled out of a building and onto a street. I stopped and watched, smiling and nodding at the many people in the wedding party who paused to smile and nod at me. 

Then suddenly Dave Foley was at my elbow.  He waded into the wedding crowd and waved for me to follow him. He came to a table holding mugs of coffee with some sort of topping which looked like whipped cream. Dave took a mug. I took one too, wondering whether Dave was trying to help me by sending me a sort of reach-out-and-take-the-good-things-of-life message.

Dave walked around with me as I continued to prowl the sidewalks aimlessly. He kept trying to offer me employment of some sort or other. Although I needed employment, and would've liked none better than the types Dave was proposing, I felt unworthy, and told Dave so. 

"You could be an agent," Dave said. "That requires no talent, and also no hard work."

Then I was wandering around by myself again in midtown, worrying that others could see how cheap my suit was. Then someone put a package into my arms. I opened it up and saw the nicest briefcase I've ever seen, filled with notepads and pens and calendars and such. Paper-based and some electronic gadgets too. All first-rate equipment.

The next day I was living in a very nice West Side apartment somehow, and actors and other performers were visiting me, wanting me to be their agent. Dave had sent me a list of the people who were coming to see me, with gigs each one would be likely to get.

gshock highfashion on YouTube

There are many channels devoted to wristwatches on YouTube. A popular form of video on these channels is the unboxing video. That's where the host of the channel, with a POV camera on his head or pointed over his shoulder, takes a package which has arrived in the mail, and removes a watch from it. 

Sounds dull? Oh man, you have no idea. I'm fascinated by watches, obsessed with them, and even I started to find this sort of thing unbearably dull after 2 or 3 times. I know what a USPS or UPS or Amazon package looks like. I know what the box that holds the watch inside the mailing package looks like. I actually tuned in to get a look at the watch, maybe even hear a description of it. But in an unboxing video, it might take the guy 5 minutes or so to get to the watch.How could it possibly take 5 minutes? you're wondering. The answer is: some people aren't just very dull, they're also very slow. 

But the host of gshock highfashion is so interesting, he can even make an unboxing interesting. Partly because he intercuts the unboxing with video of  watches and other things. Partly because his excitement is audible and contagious -- this guy is really, really into G-Shocks -- but also because he's very knowledgeable. Now, obviously, a lot of guys -- mostly guys -- are fascinated by the boxes that watches come in, or these unboxing videos wouldn't be a thing. But not everyone is good at communicating the excitement they feel. As far as knowledge goes: in one video he points to the logo on the G-Shock box, names the man who designed the logo and has interesting things to say about that man's life.  On this channel, believe it or not, I watched a dozen unboxing videos before I started to find them dull. And luckily, this channel is not ALL unboxing videos.

So what's the name of this interesting, knowledgeable YouTube host? I don't know, he doesn't say. I don't know what his face looks like either, he never shows it. His forearms are thin and wiry. There's always a G-Shock on his left wrist. Sometimes he wears G-Shocks on both wrists. That's about as well as I can visually ID him.

One of the few things he says about himself is that he repairs and services watches for a living. That's very easy to believe, because in many of his videos he's taking G-Shocks apart and putting them back together, looking and talking like a guy who knows what he's doing. I also get the impression that he is originally from Japan and now lives outside of Japan.

Now, as far as why the channel is called gshock highfashion, I'm not sure. The G-Shock part is easy enough: almost every video is entirely about G-Shocks. The few exceptions have to do with other Casio products: other watches by Casio, and a Casio alarm clock and a Casio Wall clock. But for the most part, this guy is all about the G-Shocks. 

 

Now, about the high fashion part. Maybe high fashion has different connotations in Japan than in other parts of the world. To me, high fashion, haute couture, suggests very exclusive products, very expensive, often with only one of each type ever made. G-Shocks are made in huge quantities, and they're very affordable. The most expensive G-Shock costs less than the least expensive Rolex, and the average G-Shock costs about 1/100th as much as the average Rolex. A G-Shock will run you somewhere between $40 and $3,000. As far as availability is concerned, even the "exclusive" limited edition G-Shock models are made in quantities of hundreds or thousands each. And the host of gshock highfashion will complain if he thinks that Casio has priced an item too high. Even if we're talking about an MSRP of $100 which he thinks should have been more like $80 or so. 

The fashion part of the channel's name makes sense. In addition to being able to fix G-Shocks, this guy knows a lot about their appearance, and the technical aspects of how the appearance is achieved, and he talks very intelligently about aesthetics and fashion and design, as for example in the discussion of a logo on a box described above.

Maybe the name of the channel is meant ironically, because the host likes G-Shocks, among other reasons, because they are NOT exclusive or expensive.

The channel has gotten better over time. In particular, the host's delivery, in videos released in 2020 and 2021, is much more relaxed, and therefore much more relaxing. Did he consult a vocal coach? Whatever caused the change, it came suddenly and made a huge difference.

And as if all of this wasn't already wonderful enough, the host also has a cute little kitty who sometimes wanders into the frame and does cute kitty stuff. The biggest disagreement I have with the host is that he prefers an all-black color scheme on watches more than than I do. I like the colorful, sparkly G-Shocks more than he seems to. But that's just a matter of a couple of numbers or letters in a watch's model designation.

So. Watch this channel, even if you don't care about watches, because this guy appears to be a good guy and a genius who should be famous and powerful so that he can have a greater positive influence on the world. You'll probably find it interesting, even if you don't care about watches.

Time

For millions of years, our ancestors paid very close attention to the moon. A full moon made it easier for them to move and hunt at night. At some point, someone noticed that it was always the same number of days from one full moon to the next. At some point, someone noticed that the seasons repeated themselves every twelve full moons.

This is time: recurring, measurable, predictable. 

The longest day of the year, when the shadow thrown by a stick stuck into the ground is the shortest, is always the same number of days away from the shortest day of the year, when the shadow is the longest, and halfway between those days, in the spring and again in the fall, the day will be exactly as long as the night. In a life full of dangerous, terrifying uncertainty, it was discovered that some things repeated themselves after periods of time which never changed. That is: these periods of time changed so slowly that it's only been relatively recently that we've begun to suspect that they change, let alone being able to measure the changes.

Besides showing things about times of the year, that same stick stuck into the ground, if it was kept in exactly the same place and observed very carefully, could be used to divide the day into equal parts of time, even though the days themselves got longer, and then shorter, and then longer again. The more interesting someone found all of this to be, the more they would want the stick never to be moved, or, alternatively, to replace it with something bigger and heavier. Maybe something made of stone. 

Whatever else Stonehenge may have been used for, it, along with some other ancient temples, has an opening through which the sun can shine on the summer solstice, and only then, causing interesting optical effects. Provided that the weather on summer solstice is not too cloudy.

From the moon and the seasons to sundials to water clocks to mechanical clocks and watches to quartz clocks and watches to atomic clocks and ever smaller and more numerous and affordable and convenient devices connected to the best authorities of time and ever more accurate, only to be rendered relative and un-absolute by Einsteins's physics, ...I don't know how to finish that sentence. Days and years have turned out not to exactly match the movements of planets and stars on which they are supposedly based, and rather than adjust our units of time we have found it more convenient to adjust the number of units which measure those movements. Which in a way means that, the more absolutely we define and measure time, the more mysterious becomes the question: what is it we are defining and measuring?