brief history of the web (personal perspective)

and as seems to be the flow of babble these days, which may very well be more toward the interactive than it has been in years, this entry is yet another comment expanded (though the previous two still await expansion themselves) in the brain in the head on the shoulders of this body i loosely call home... you can find the original comment in the previous entry and that you, quasar9, for the inspiration...

the thought stream was about how the internet is used to communicate and in some ways provide a safer, less immediate, less demanding form of personal and impersonal interaction... for all the pros and cons real and potential, i found myself exploring my time on the net from times i was caught in the web to times i was away for a while... this comment barely scratches the surface, but it may summarize the brief history of the web as i personally experienced it as i realize this is the start of the second decade since i first made a what feels, at least in me, like a home on the web...

we join the comment as i respond:

so true, so sad in many ways, at least when this form of communication substitutes for other more personal, immediate, and intimate forms of interaction (which is has for me and probably does even more for many)...

that is one reason i avoid chat programs... i do not need to become even more conditioned to look for interaction in this sedentary position...

it does go a long way to satisfying my love for words, writing, reading, and corresponding though...

back in 1995, i spent some time in AOL chat rooms... i still have fond memories of at least one person there, but we were never more than names on a screen...

in 1997, i spend a great deal of time in a Yahoo chat room called The Asylum™ and found a few wonderful people far away (Perth, Austraalia; Seattle, Washington; Aukland, New Zealand)... those are the three i recall most warmly, even recall names and things about their family and lives...

i also did a lot of chatting on ICQ when it first came out... and Missy, one of the people in my offline life today, was met through ICQ back in 1997... i think she was 15 at the time and looking for a daddy and I still play that role in her life (much to the chagrin of my wallet)... i stayed with her and her mom a little while in 1998 and when i returned to Florida...

homelessness in that period took me away from Yahoo online space (i no longer felt like the slap-happy bopping bouncing cartoon character "anonanonanon" or even the closer to the core me "childinside" i portrayed in The Asylum™ and i returned and found myself in newsgroups... similar to comments, except threaded like bulletin boards, i indulged my loneliness and desire to help others by spending a lot of time in a newsgroup specifically focused on loneliness... became one of the regularly there... even got caught up in the drama of the moment...

less immediacy, less conversation, less chance of having to discuss my impoverished (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and every other ally) state of being...

i also started blogging in 1998, simultaneous with all the other stuff... maybe earlier, even, and that was the beginning drifting away from chat, IM, boards, and newsgroups... it was my way of trying to keep in touch with people as i spent less time online... it did not work...

i found that even those who claimed to adore me and whined when i was gone and cheered when i returned did not follow me over to my blog... apparently it was the atmosphere of the communal interaction, the "room" and not any specific individual that everybody was there for...

i never found the same interactive energy/satisfaction and adrenaline rush i found in chat or even in newsgroups, but i settled into this online lifestyle mostly because my computer could not keep up with the advancing software technology and then, it because comfortable to play at a much lower energy level with much less activity or opportunity for connection...

i became increasingly lazy...

apathetic, complacent, ambivalent, and fat in my internal thinking, external movement, and integrated emotional life...

i let my abs go so flabby i do not have sense memory of being physically myself... and this is where i stand sit today...

dumb...

numb...

lonesome...

on my bum...

yes, on my bum, but at least i am no longer a bum, i gave up the carefree homeless lifestyle for the casual night shift lifestyle back in 2001 and then gave up that comfortable low-responsibility life and now wear collared shirts and pants and shoes to work (next level is a tie and i am resisting that like a noose, literally) and sit in a director's chair in a private office... shared administrative assistant though) producing reports and proposals that develop and improve the systems and turn the engines of a small psychiatric hospital...

monday i'll be at the marriot in oklahoma on business...

life comes full circle once again as this is where i left off back in 1990 when i ran away from the administrative bureaucratic madness for life of total leisure a piece of swampland in Florida... pity i did not have internet back then (i settled for snail mail and advertised in a dozen magazines (Writer's Digest, Rolling Stone, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Cosmo, and lots of others) as i publishing newsletters and a small magazine called Paper Fantasies to an interactive crowd of thousands)...

and all this to say, yeah, i agree... and I suppose there's a touch of been there, done that in this ramble, but more, it's a part of the renewed impetus to introduce myself to strangers again... so thank you for getting caught up in that and helping to inspire more memories to pop up...

you too, find wonder and fun in this weekend... weekends are made to be great :)

and now, at least for anyone stumbling upon this entry in the archives or in the brief time it will appear as the blog, you know a bit more about me and my life on the early web... we won't count the brief episodes on the BBS system back in the 1980s... and this probably could be expanded with links to milestone web pages and other links that marked transitions from one phase (the beginning) of the past ten years (or twenty, for that matter) to another and eventually, that might be the plan, but for now, in the limited time i spend here, this is the brief history of the web from my personal perspective, outline version...

this is the point when writing discuss amongst yourselves would be an appropriate closing line, but it seems kind of pretentious in a blog, at least in a blog with the small community we share... still, i dream of boingoboingo interaction, so i'll be pretentious and giggle as i close encouraging you to talk amongst yourselves...

nite nite :)