And that, sir, is how we know the earth to be round.

Fast forward to my freshman year in college . . . . AIM is everywhere. I spent hours on end "talking" to people on it, half of whom I could have hit with a rock provided both of our windows were open. I think my one handed typing speed was up about 30 wpm. Fast forward a few years, and where has AIM (or MSN messenger) gone? It seems to have shriveled up and died quicker than a St. George lawn. We all must have decided one day that it was actually worth seeing life beyond your our boxy computer monitor and once we weren't all chained to our computers in our tiny little dorm rooms, there was no going back.

The AIM empire was felled by two new city-states. The need for ever more instantaneous and ubiquitous personal contact (so young people can ask each other "what r u doing?") found a new heroine in texting. I've had little personal contact with the texting phenomenon, but it seems to be intent on taking over the world. But that's ok, because I feel it's important that we have a national system in place so that all 8th graders can get in instant contact with each other. The more substantial information sharing realm that vacated by the withdrawal of dinky personal web pages and AIM was reinvigorated with the advent of the Blog. And so, some talented computer geeks out there have made it possible for each and every one of us to have a place where we need only type, and suddenly, there is our well polished, upstanding looking blog, proclaiming our ever so important personal insights to the world. Unfortunately, it turns out that in the last 10 years (since we were back in "dinky personal web page" phase) individual personal lives haven't improved dramatically. So the only thing that we can offer the world through our blogs is our own rambling commentary on our own boring lives turning the internet into an even bigger, and even boringer place than it was yesterday.

Long live the blahg!