By BOBBY "SOJU" TUTTLE
Ahssa! Staff Writer
http://www.migukin.com
http://ahssa.blogspot.com
It was way too early in the morning, but we were sitting around,
drinking, watching Closer and paying Uno and for some reason none of us
was willing to call it a night.
"UNO!" I yelled. I am a badass Uno player. Shelly and Coy hate me for
it, too.
"Hey, it was about 10 years ago that Netscape went public. I remember,
Coy, that you have some interesting memories about all of that," I
said, keeping an eye on Closer. None of us were angry enough or unhappy
enough to actually watch it with our full attention, so we just kept
and eye on it to see if anything interesting happened.
"Well," Coy say, easing back a bit into the sofa. "I was working as an
intern at my local weekly newspaper and one week I decided to go
production in the middle of the night to see the newspaper actually
birthed, if you will."
"Uh huh," I said, nodding.
"Well, I was really obsessed with technology back then -- even more
than now -- and Netscape was all I could talk about. I must have
installed Netscape on a hundred computers in computer labs across my
university that spring."
"Cool!"
"I had first been introduced to Netscape when I went to the computer
help desk at school and asked them if they could give me another copy
of Mosaic -- I had somehow lost mine. With all the conspiratorial vigor
of that FreeFrench dude on Hogan's Hero's -"
"You mean 'LeBeau?'" Shelly interjected, cloyingly annoying as always.
"Yea, yea, yea," Coy said.
"Anyway, I remember the guy saying, 'Why do you want Mosaic, when you
can use Netscape -- it has built-in in-line imagine capability,' he
said. That may not seem like such a big deal to you now, Bobby, but
just imagine having to install three or four helper applications
whenever you wanted to use the Web. Remember, I didn't have my own
computer back then and so every time I came into a computer lab I had
to re-install everything because the computer's hard drives were swiped
clean each night by the school's IT department."
"Ahhhh," Shelly said, knowing.
"So that summer, all I could think about was Netscape and how it was
going to Change The World. I must have driven everyone bat**** with
much much I talked about it," Coy said.
"I can only imagine," Shelly said with a sneer.
Coy eyed Shelly briefly through slit eyes.
"I can still remember the acrid smell of the press that night. There
were no windows in the room, so you had no idea what time it was. I
recall there was this pressman that looked pretty much like a troll --
or at least a hobbit -- who had a cellphone in 1995, which meant
something. God knows who a dude like that was talking to."
"Sometime in the middle of the night, the press began to spit out
newspapers and me and a bunch of other people started 'flipping'
newspapers -- that is, putting inserts into the newspaper. It was
mind-bendingly boring, but you ended up having some pretty cool
conversations 'cause you had nothing else to do and keeping your mind
stimulated prevented you from passing out from lack of sleep."
"Before too long, we started talking about the stockmarket and I
started blabbing about how there was this new, special company about to
have an IPO soon," Coy said.
"You were insufferable, even then, I suspect," Shelton said, wryly.
"I kept telling the other flippers -- if you guys want to make some
money, you should invest in the company called Netscape, it's going to
change the world! TV, newspapers, radio, everything will be upended and
better living through technology will become a reality," Coy said.
"They pretty much just nodded and smiled that such a whippersnapper
would think he knew enough to help them make money."
"And you didn't really, did you?" Shelly said. "Even if they'd followed
your advice, they would have lost their ****rts 'cause folks like Tom
Brokaw had the inside track and once the real money was made, they were
dumping shares to the 'bigger fool' who was willing to pay an even more
outlandish price per share."
"But if they'd stayed in the market a few years and left before the
bubble burst in 2000-2001 they could have made a pretty penny," Coy
said.
"Yea, yea, yea. Whatever," Shelly said.
"Looking back, what do you think of the revolution that Netscape set
off, specifically when it comes to blogs?" I said.
"Hmmm. Let me cogitate on that for a moment," Coy said. I could tell he
was giving the isssue a lot of thought.
"Well, I'd have to say that the rise of blogs is probably one of the
more interesting aspects of what Netscape let loose," Coy said. "I
mean, what is a blog, really but the same damn thing that people were
setting up in 1995 when they figured out how to change their de fault
homepage. Throw in a few snarky comments and a cat picture or two and
you have yourself a blog."
"Tell me about Suck, I remember you mentioning that once when you were
really drunk," I said.
"Oh, well, interesting thing about suck.com....it was one of those
first times when I realized how powerful the web was going to be. It's
right up there when I did my first few lines of HTML, looked at the
screen in front of me and realized, 'Anyone in the world with Web
access can view that now...' When the Wall Street Journal did a big
write up of Suck -- which was essentially a modern blog only about a
decade early -- I felt my entire body tingle. It was just two dudes
goofing off after work at hotwired.com. It just seemed like something
someone like me would end up doing eventually. Little did I know that
the entire world would pick up the banner of Suck one day and
revolutionize the world of media."
"I dunno, dude. The whole Suck thing was a long time ago...I don't even
know if blogs matter the way they used to when they were new," Shelly
said, showing real interest in the conversation for the first time. "I
mean, it used to be all you need was 'tude, broadband Internet access
and a member****p to The WELL to become a global online media darling
for a few weeks. Those days are long past, now that everyone and his
brother has a blog."
"Yeah, I kinda agree with you on that," Coy said. "I mean, the whole
dynamic has changed. While there are those few rare occasions where
someone makes it big simply because of a blog, they're few and far
between now and blogs for writers have kinda become an expected part of
your career. I see them as sort of the post-modern resume for today's
writer -- any editor or publisher interested in hiring you now can
sample your work in realtime instead of a few choice half-dozen clips
you may have attached to your resume."
"Editing Ahssa! the thing I've realized is how selfish blogging is --
it's not about your reader****p, it's about you. It's about ego stroking
and writing about whatever you want to write about however you damn
well fell like writing about it," Shelton said.
"But aren't we in danger of having an entire generation of writers so
spoiled by the blogging experience that they won't be able to hack (no
pun intended) the idea that there is some sort of 'greater good' that
they will have to write for if they work with a MSM organization?" Coy
asked.
"I think that's a possibility. Many people who otherwise wouldn't write
for an audience now do and so a whole different type of person is
getting a taste for how addictive writing for an audience can be.
They're coming to expect that will make it big if only they can think
up something so off the wall and entertaining that a MSM hiring manager
somewhere will humor them and give them a shot," Shelton said.
"Yeah," Coy said. "I always hate it when something that is a cool
little secret suddenly becomes an entitlement to the next generation.
So now you got all these dumb***** who think simply because they're
snarky and have a freshly minted J-School degree that they can be the
next Gawker or Defamer --"
"--Well, if they're a WELL member..."
"Will you two please stop harping on the mutha****in WELL? You sound
so...so...uncool when you do that," I jumped in.
They both looked at me like I'd farted.
"Anyhoo, it'd just like to know how Blogger picks its featured blogs.
It seems like there is no rhyme or reason to it," Coy said.
"Yeah. You got the whole Bring Back The Couch thing and then you got
David Brin. What's up with that?"
"It would be so sweet to get that," I said.
"Yeah," Coy and Shelly said, almost in unison
"But there are dangers to blogs, too," Coy said. "You hear all the time
about people blabbing too much about work or their romantic life and
ending up getting fired and ****."
"People too often seem to think they have some magical mystery power
online where they can share their inner most feelings and no one of
im****tance in their private life will find out, even though thousands
-- if not millions -- of people are reading their **** every day,"
Shelly said.
"As a long time Usenet user, one of the more unsettling developments of
late is how Google Groups has changed a medium that had a two week
memory into one that has a memory so long that Phd candidates in the
future will be picking through it just as the Sun blinks out," Shelly
continued.
"Yeah, I feel for you Shelton. **** like that happens, sometimes. But
for you, it must be pretty cool 'cause you got like two or three Usenet
newsgroups named after you," Coy said.
"I don't know," Shelton said after a moment. "It is cool, but in
another way it's very unsettling. I don't like it how something I
posted to Usenet ten years ago is now as fresh as it was way back when.
I mean, I'm a different person than I was ten years ago -- very
different."
I looked at the two older men and realized how tired I was.
"Guys, it's like 4:26 a.m. It's time to go to sleep. I gotta teach
little Korean kids English tomorrow."
"Me, too," Coy said.
"Me, too," Shelton said.
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