26 Feb 2008 Update: Be sure to watch Download: The True History of the Internet on the Science Channel starting March 3…
Original posting 27 Dec 2007: The first computer program I typed in was on my VIC 20 (20K RAM) by Commodore, purchased from Sears, hooked up to a $10 B/W TV from a pawn shop. The language was Basic and the OS was CBM 1.0 (?) , with a copyright by Microsoft, one of Gates, Inc.’s first projects. The ubiquitous 10 PRINT ‘Hello, World.’ 20 END or something like it started many of us oldsters on the Road to Perdition. Actually, that was my first personal computer, my first FORTRAN IV stack went back a few years before that at UT Austin in 1967.
This fall I found myself on the threshold of a new venture. As I began the last year of my third score of years on this orb, I launched into discovery of new contacts and the reconnection of old comrades. I have been involved in the World Wide Web since I was exposed to it in my days as a Unix System Admin in the early 90’s. I though it was some sort of duck-like reference to Gopher, an Internet/Unix text indexing and search thingy, that was pretty hot back then, and actually is still in limited use. The Web changed my career and my life, opened up both to a bright new version of the Heinlein world in the Future History series.
Now comes my jumping in ‘cautiously with both feet’ to the blogging, twittering, facebook and avatar imbued world of social networking, widgets feeding widgets, ‘people who need people…’ etc. An old code monkey who is hooked phonics and information just loves this new toy store. I am looking forward to the next score of years, and my dream of living in a defendable country place and working in a rock&roll soaked and Dali decorated office in Second Life DC, watching the twin suns of SL Tattooine set as I post to this blog and wait for the start of the weekly meeting of Federal Consortium for Virtual Exploration. Let’s light this candle!
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