To those who have inquired and anyone else interested in why Listics has been silent so long, I’m okay. The first quarter of 2024 has been difficult, but things are looking up. Two months ago I had a mild heart attack, but everything now is groovy. The cardiologist has given me a handful of pills and a clean bill of heath. Thanks for your concern. On with the show…
The internet is both complete and never will be. The geeks encrusted around the edges—pontificating, pushing product, trapped in a meta narrative that will not die, though it longs for a brave soul to stand up and shout “Put a fork in it, fer Chrissakes”—the nerds, the wonks, the technoid dweebs continue to pick away at the surface revealing new shiny bits. The mob, like a murder of crows flapping and cawing, stealing the bright shiny objects, claiming them as their own, flutter along, or wander, or strut, bedazzled by the gadgetry, the handhelds, the laptops, the notebooks, the netbooks—yes, and even the Wii—the people whose attention (whose cash!) the entrepreneurs seek to corral are really happy to have an ever changing landscape of pastimes available, from online Scrabble to Hulu TeeVee, from Java juiced gaming to online shopping. They differentiate themselves into the “Mac community” and the “non-Mac so what” community, but really all they seek is the connection, the celestial hook-up. Anything else is superfluous.
Down below, in the boiler room, the huge, powerful engines pump bits around the globe. It’s here the real work has been done. Paving the information super highway, cabling, routing, maintaining the infrastructure, is a subterranean task that the gaggle of geeks up top quite rightly consider to be beneath them. And it’s fundamental. All else is SMOP—Simply a Matter Of Programming.
Somebody wake me for intermission.
* * *
On a lighter note, Leslie recently linked to ADA Online, reminding me that time passes… hard to believe that I first read the book forty years ago. The online thing, begun in 1992 and annotated in frame sets, reminds me of the Pynchon wiki.
7 Comments
Glad you’re OK, Frank … I can’t see a glitch in the ticker shorting synaptic or neuronal activity in the old bonce. You blog for eight years and … hey, a man deserves a holiday. Enjoy it but return with your inimitable humor and insight intact …
Right on, Frank. Thanks for sharing the link. That’s what we do here in Midgard, right?
p.s. when you’ve summoned the pluck, there’s an update on prison systems you need to pull down from the ether. just a reminder. as you were.
Thanks guys.
Mike, what great pictures! Truly breathtaking– and I’m not using the word carelessly. The name “Platboom” itself has the sound of surf on the beach.
Charles, are you talking about the Pew “One in thirty-one” report? If not, can you give me some pointage? I’ll post some thoughts on the March Pew update soon. Thanks for shaking my tree!
Dear Frank,
*So* good to see you here. I have been watching from the sidelines, quietly holding you in my thoughts. Last year I had a “uterine cancer” scare that lasted for months … and when I was given the clean bill of health, and sent home (finally) … I went home, and turned my physical and emotional life upside down and inside out. And now, life has never looked so good! I wish you spiritual, emotional and physical health. I, personally, want to see you around for a loooooooooong time. After all, I am an eternal groupie, plus you turned me on to all the fun I am having today on Facebook, twitter – and not to mention all that blogging support all these years!
Be well, dear friend. Go in peace. : )
Dear Frank,
I suddenly sat up in bed and said to myself, But where’s Frank?!” the very night before you posted this. Am I physic? Are you really okay? Hope so!
I think that might be it, Frank. I don’t rightly recall the name of the project you were working on, but I do remember the pride at your being selected to be part of it. I’d click on the “prison reform” link in your scategories sidebar, but, y’know, meh.