Before all of this fancy Web 2.0 stuff, things were much more simple. There was Arpanet, and something called Bitnet. Then there was Usenet, which was pretty much like your modern Web forums, complete with tons of nasty, immature blather. Most people didn't know about any of this stuff. Maybe that was a good thing. Early email was pretty crude. The servers didn't take care of routing, so you had to construct the "full path" to the recipient of your email. So from Bob at Carnegie Mellon to John in New York, the path might be: bob.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!cs.umd.edu!newsfeed.gsfc.nasa.gov!ukma!news.cuny.edu!john.
How's that for a crazy email address?
These days, network communications have blossomed to fill out many needs. MySpace. Facebook. Instant Messenger. Text Messaging. Twitter. Linked In. Inked In. It's impressive. For some reason (the reason being my curmudgeonly inner Luddite), I have successfully avoided exposure to most of these things. My inner Luddite gets annoyed when forced to do something that seems unnecessary. For instance, the fact that iTunes software must be installed on a computer to even scan through the musical offerings on the site? Unnecessary. The requirement that special software must be installed to download a full digital album from Amazon? Unnecessary.
Mostly, I've held these technologies at arms length with a smug look on my face, figuring that I'd never use them. But recently, I've had to work with some websites that intend to extend their reach via things like FaceBook. What's more, material is (indirectly) sold through Amazon and iTunes. When working to cobble together content, my strategy of avoidance is becoming less and less viable.
A friend of mine pointed out that Twitter might be a valuable tool for promotion. Really? I thought it was just another chat thing on steroids. Well, it turns out he was right. After doing a little research and then registering, the power of its model became apparent. After only a day of playing around with the technology, I was connected to a bunch of people. Heck, that was easy!
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