Other people started the Internet. The military started off with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Just like General Eisenhower had to use the threat of military action on our own soil to push through funding for the interstate highway system, it was the threat of nuclear disaster that let the government come up with an inter-network of communication technology.
Well, we aren’t even close to tapping all the possibilities DARPA started, what has come to be the world wide web, that trinity of double-yoos. It’s my Internet. I’ll share it with the rest of you, but it is mine like the air I breathe.
Grizzled military contractors in their 60s will scoff at me, but I was an early adopter of the DARPA enterprise. My college had a system that connected up with it, and I latched on like a leech to that possibility of communicating with interesting people. I spent hours and hours chatting via green glowing text with all the other people who lived by the light of the computer lab monitors. It was 1990 and no one had heard of e-mail.
Back in the college days, I learned nothing about computers. I mean, nothing. I knew to hit the enter key when I was done, but not much more than that. I did ask for help to understand, I did. But I can’t help it if the nerd boys in the lab dissolved into blushing confusion when I asked them to explain. They just found it easier to do it for me. Speaking face to face with a freshman coed was too much.
I repented at my leisure for not asking more questions.
But look at us now! In a satisfyingly ironic twist, I now work as a video conferencing professional. I have progressed to a pretty darn sophisticated method of e-communication.
And email and the Internet are huge and getting bigger every day. I have been able to take my English major writing ambitions and get my stuff out there. I have my own blog, and I even have been a major contributor to starting up this cool website, Blogcritics.
I heard about BC, and it fit exactly what I wanted at the time. It was a place that was designed to get more of an audience than my own little web page. Okay, so I really didn’t see how it could actually make a profit, but I was living in Silicon Valley at the time and had seen about 10 bazillion start up companies with worse ideas. Funding wasn’t my problem. BC was a place where I could be published and be read by more than just my mother. And I was thankful to Eric Olsen and Philip Winn for giving me that chance.
Article comments
1 - John Spivey
Good post...yet we have miles to go before we sleep.
2 - Rohan Venkat
Great Post, Murphy.
I haven't been a contributor for very long, and I haven't been able to post frequently, or participate in as much discussion as I would like to, but I've read as much as possible, and have to say that it's a great community, that consistently puts out quality material. It's something I'd always looked for, not just news, but a reaction to it with the bias and everything, Newsplus as they call it now.
In fact I've start spending more time here, and barely gone back to what was once my homepage Google News, in the past month or so.
3 - Chris Beaumont
Murphy,
I first read this in the group and thought it would make a great post on the site, then I read the encouraging words. I have been a contributor here since July of 2004 and have been around the top of the contributor list for quite some time. Its not out of some type of competition, but I feel that the only way to get better is to keep writing. My quality is spotty at best, but I always aim to fill a hole in my creative itch.
In my time here, I have seen this site grow by leaps and bounds. It has been quite amazing to be a first hand witness.
I too can be thin skinned at times, but I love the whole editing thing here. I feel that it is helping me to attain that goal of improving my writing, and the editorial staff deserves all the credit in thw world for the time and effort they put into increasing thw quality of the site. I know I have a long way to go before I become a truly proficient write.
Again, excellent post!
4 - Scott Butki
I love this part:
"Connie had the annoying quality of being right. I knew I had done a half-assed review, but I arrogantly thought that half-assed was good enough for the Internet."
Very well said. Good piece.