I believe that the Internet has had a rather large effect on the way we communicate as a society. I believe that Vannevar Bush was correct in his foresight that the ability to share information between people greatly accelerates our ability to solve problems. I also believe that Nathaniel Hawthorne was correct in his fears that technology in many forms whether it be just a potbellied stove, or the latest Bluetooth enabled gizmo (when is the iwatch coming out? Because let's face it a watch that can only tell time is damn boring), has a tendency to change communication.

I think the single greatest change in communication that the Internet has brought forth compared to the days when we were all gathered around the hearth at night, listening to ma or pa spin yarns about the good old days is that we have lost interpersonal communication between a small group but there is certainly a huge increase in the number of people we communicate with or at least had the ability to. Since returning the school I would say my time spent on the Internet has increased it least tenfold, yet since most of my friends are scattered all over the planet I feel like I have a lot less interpersonal communication that I had four or five years ago. It is kind of ironic the way we have the ability to know so much more about one another and yet at the same time truly know each other even less.

We can't help but sense a little bit of Bush's excitement when he expresses his belief in the potential for peacetime progress within the scientific community if his idea is carried out. My grandfather was of this era and spent most of his post military career in Oak Ridge, Tn. Working on the follow-up to the Manhattan Project. My brother has since done documentaries interviewing the same scientists that both Bush and my grandfather worked with. The amount of loyalty towards their country their projects, missions, and certainly each other is overwhelming. You can certainly grasp and understanding why they are referred to as the greatest generation. The only reason my brother's documentary was so successful is because he was the Pete Gooch's grandson, because even though most of the information has been declassified, most of these people don't return interviewers phone calls until they got word of whom my brother was. The group of people who can keep a secret this long obviously had a sense of being part of the team and I think it's that sharing of information that helped to build this sort of a community.

I think as much as Hawthorne rants and raves about how this new technology that has been seemingly thrust upon him is destroying interpersonal communication, I think that if he is given the option he would have greatly embraced the Internet. Before this tool of communication came along for someone to willingly distribute this particular information (this blog) would have had to own their own personal printing press. I understand that more than likely the only person to ever read this will be some cat named Derek who is solely responsible for it being written in the first place, but it is a very powerful thought to think that is accessible by millions. In less Hawthorne was some sort of eliteist I have to believe he would see the benefit of being able to access so many readers so quickly. I assume all writers create in hopes that their writings find an audience. And blog seems to me to be a little bit like a bitch session anyway perhaps a template to rant sounds a little better. I know that's what my blog experience seems like it's me ranting it sounded to me like Hawthorne was ranting about the loss of his fireplace I would be rating about this assignment but somewhere about halfway through it I think I got the point...... how the hell did that happen?

I think if we could take Hawthorne to our local Lowe's hardware store he would be happy to see the array of metal fire pits you can put on your back porch, and once again gather around fire's warming glow and appreciate it in a much more social setting. I think they even have one available that is big enough to set a new record of 61 cords of wood. I think Mr. Bush would be quite proud to see the amount of information that can be exchanged over great distances at any given moment I'm sure that it would be beyond his wildest dreams and that he would be absolutely speechless when we showed him the utube video of the fat kid lip sinking europop songs

early computing

My first computer experience was either across the street from my grandparents house, my friends dad had a tandy computer with a cassette drive and a modem that actually needed the physical placement of a telephone into a reciever he taught me a simple list command that would print my name repeatedly all the way down the screen.....About the same time in elementary school I found myself sharing a game of Oregon Trail with 3 other students (public school,only one computer) I don't recall that we ever did anything else on that machine...After mastering the art of hunting with the space bar on the apple IIe, I graduated to a commodore 64 with an external floppy drive that was about the size of a shoebox. ( I thought I made it quite clear to santa that I wanted a new bike!) I would get hacked games on 5 1/4 floppy disks "Yi ar kung fu" was a personal favorite. I remember taking scissors and cutting a slot into the sleeve so that the disk would record on both sides, this was cheaper than the disks with dual slots for some reason. Later I bought a used 286 and sold ball cards on bulleten boards. I remember one summer getting an offer to run wire for a campus intranet from my roomate, after we ran miles of cable he wired up server or something in the ceiling tiles so we could access the campus network from the house never could figure out how to hack grades or parking tickets though. The couple of years later I had another roommate to link our computers together so that we could play a game called "quake" this is what I think made video games fun, the human interaction. It could be that I dislike having someone to hear my smack talk. This was about the same time that I've first chatted with someone via the Internet, it was a pair of roommates from South Africa we mainly discussed music and I remember thinking wow y'all listen to some weird stuff! The only thing I really did other than play games was the type of the papers and check out a few bulletin boards. I spent the next few years dog sled guiding in the winter and white water rafting in the summer so I didn't have a lot of contact with computers. When I decided to move to Vail and rent a condo, I went on eBay at my parents house and lot at 10 GB Toshiba laptop that had a DVD player and a dial-up modem. A few months later I decided I really needed a CD burner because I was pretty sure no matter what the legality Napster kicked ass. I still have it it's about half the height of a shoebox burns @ 2x I decided to keep it because I noticed it will burn copyrighted material it doesn't have what ever recognition keeps that from happening and if this goes ahead and burns the copyright protection right along with it, not that I use this sort of thing I'm just nostalgic If I remember correctly a paid $910 for it, to the best of my knowledge of friend of mine still uses it to check e-mail to watch DVDs when he's on the night shift at the hospital. I gave it to him When I decided to return to school two years ago I researched online and decided there was a pretty good deal at best buy, another Toshiba laptop with built-in wireless (none that plug-in card crap from me this time). After the rocket scientist at best buy screwed up the prize when they did not have a case that came with the package I ended up getting another hundred dollars off plus a better case, who said their work benefits to shopping at the box stores. I use this laptop to compose all the silly writing assignments that we get to do in school I'm certainly not referring to this one because it has very noble merrit (wow I suddenly feel a bit cheaper ) actually this is my first blog so here's to the future. Early this past summer I think a family member of mine may have plugged up the wrong DC cord and fried my motherboard so I once again found myself in the market for another computer I received a letter from my parents because they had software issues with it and bought a replacement while it was being fixed. I still use it for most of the papers because it has XP which will run my dictation software and my latest purchase only about a week old runs Vista and I think it's a pain in the ass! It's better for multimedia and surfing but it won't run "Dragon speak" so I'd like to close this rant by saying up yours Bill Gates! I think miss Windows 98

whats shakin

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