Those Days are Gone

There is an inevitable mourning that comes with age. We mourn for the people we've lost, for the changes in culture that leave us isolated on little islands fading into sunset.

One of mine is the days of pre-internet computing. It was an age of deep practicality, sprinkled with whimsy, layered in a literate humor, and for a man with anphasia, these places on disparate nets (BBSs, Fidonet, Milnet, etc) were as real a set of places as any I've visited corporeally.

I can recall reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, and being swept away with the idea of a connection that circled the planet, so much so that I tried it myself. How I got there was a mix of phone phreaking, college networks over dial up, and the help of a long lost friend, and thinking back on it now, I see a world we've lost in the haze of consumerism.

Once upon a time, I had a hand me down 8086, a true IBM XT in the 5160 chassis. Model 7 keyboard with it's incredibly loud clack, the giant red power switch; it was terrible. It was glorious. It was a window into worlds that, in the hills of Wilkes County, defied reason. Using phone phreaking, a "borrowed" account into App State's Conrad VMS server, I explored a world that very few people even knew existed. It was a world of notes and messages, left from very talented engineers to other engineers, riffing on math, software engineering, the deep divide between themselves and the men to whom they ultimately reported. There was a dry, fatalistic humor in these men that appealed greatly to a latchkey kid in cow country. It was a world that required a level of inquisitiveness and ingenuity to even find, and I became the person I am now through that window.

That world no longer exists. Great thoughts were replaced with advertisements. Literate jokes were replaced with animated images. The challenge to find that world was replaced by ubiquitous access.