the heady rush

I've been thinking about this:

It's funny, when people were envisioning the future in the sixties and seventies, they correctly predicted there would be home computers. They incorrectly did not predict how the computers would be linked through the Internet and other ways. Think how boring your computer would be if it could not connect with other computers.

We're like stand-alone computers without the Internet or any other networking.

These guys are like computers – that have suddenly got their first Internet connection.

Some of you don't remember – but I do – that first heady rush. The links to anywhere. To everywhere. To ten thousand programs, databases, infobanks.

Al Schroeder (the creator of Mindmistress) said that. My response was: yes and no.

Yes to the fun of being online (on the BBSs, before the Internet was ubiquitous), meeting people, learning things, exchanging ideas, becoming friends with people I wouldn't have met any other way. That was great. The Internet versions of that are still great, or can be. And yes to the huge amount of information available, some of which is even accurate.

But I never found my computers boring, even before I got my first modem (any more than I think I'm boring as a standalone person, not networked – well, there have been some people who thought I was boring, but that wasn't the reason).

If you've ever written a novel on a typewriter, that's reason enough to value a computer.

It allows me to revise text without retyping. Everything else is gravy. Tasty gravy, in some cases, but gravy.

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