Web Apparitions
By Bob Kaehms
The old Web is as dead as a punch card. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is that's particularly dead about a punch card. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard an abacus as the deadest piece of infomongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my tendonitis-ridden hands shall not disturb it, or the World's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that the old Web is as dead as a punch card.
Actually, it was Old Marley, and a door-nail, but since this is nearly the end of the 20th century, I modernize.
And what three apparitions haunt me this Christmas? Permit me to close my eyes for a few brief moments, I'll connect.
[sound of modem dialing]
Apparition One presses the Back button.
It's late 1990 and the URL is but a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye. I am working on a short video on groupware for Lockheed. Sitting across the table is Doug Engelbart.
Doug, are you surprised at how far the technology has come in the last 40 years since you first started working at augmenting man's intellect?
No, not at all. I knew from the start that the technology would continue to scale down and make it all possible.
Are you surprised at the human side of this evolution?
I thought we'd have come a lot farther by now. It's as if we're huddled along the Hudson in small settlements, totally unaware of what lies ahead in the vast expanse of the new world.
