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BBB III TTT SSS BBB Y Y TTT EEE SSS ONLINE EDITION:
B B I T S B B Y Y T E S =THE ELECTRONIC
BBB I T SSS AND BBB YYY T EEE SSS =NEWSLETTER FOR
B B I T S B B Y T E S =INFORMATION
BBB III T SSS BBB Y T EEE SSS =HUNTER-GATHERERS
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Bits and Bytes Online Edition was my entry point into the world of online publishing. Back then the term was e-zine. From 1993 to 1995 I produced Bits and Bytes Online Edition. It was eventually subtitled "The Electronic Newsletter for High-Tech Dumpster Divers" and later, as interest in it grew and I began to think I could make a go of it as a way to make a living, it became "The Electronic Newsletter for Information Hunter-Gatherers" so as to appeal to slightly more upscale audience.
Those were the early days of the mass Internet. You kids today have it easy! We had to hand-code our web pages in binary using assembler language. They were truly the stone ages of computing. Of course it hasn't gotten a whole lot better these days. Computers are still too hard to use, operating systems and programs are still buggy and for the most part lacking in grace. Getting the files for BnB from the Internet to my hard drive to the Radio UserLand server was an adventure in technological tomfoolery. But let's not even go there. That's another topic for another day.
BnB gave me my 15 minutes of Internet fame. It was distributed via email. About 3 weeks into it I received my first international subscriber, from Korea I think. I was amazed at the global nature of what was brewing here in cyberspace. About two months into it I was overwhelmed by the logistics of distributing this thing myself and Paul Snow at the University of Nebraska set me up on their listserver. (Hope you're still out there Paul! Drop me a line.) I was clueless. Still am. :-> At its peak BnB was going out to about 8,000 subscribers, and it was being posted in Gopher space (pre-web tech) and bulletin board systems. I received some job offers related to my BnB endeavors. In 1993 O'Reilly had something that was called Global Net Navigator there was some talk of me heading up the tech section of the site, but that fell through when O'Reilly sold GNN to AOL. I was briefly in cahoots with Chris Locke a.k.a. Rageboy to do the tech area of a website that Internet World Magazine was putting up. That project got as far as a prototype before the plug was pulled on us. I spoke at a conference for journalists in Atlanta; they paid my way down and fed me and everything! I was in the first edition of the Internet Yellow Pages, and my name is in a book called Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors, edited by Mark Stefik and Vinton Cerf. (Unfortunately I didn't write the piece that was attributed to me, it was just a piece of internet folklore that was making the rounds and I published it in BnB and suddenly I'm an author!
One thing I am not is a businessman, and nothing ever came of any of it. Fortunately I was a computer programmer and unbeknownst to me I was riding the Internet bubble that burst last year, so I was doing OK financially and BnB just kind of faded away. That was then, and this is now. I am committed to keeping this blog going, something real interesting is happening out here on the edge, where the action always is. Lots going on, good stuff and bad stuff. Life on life's terms.
I am still wrestling with the blog format in my head, trying to make it work for me. One thing I notice is that it is teaching me what I am truly interested in, what my attention is drawn to. I am focusing in on some areas, and in looking over the old issues of BnB I couldn't help notice that many of my concerns have not changed: personal freedom and creativity through applied technology, and in general the intersection of technology with society, how it affects us and how we affect it. I wish I didn't have to concern myself with politics, but the chowderheads in Washington and Hollywood are trying to pull one over on us in a big way, in a way that will stifle the creative possibilities offered up by digital technologies.
Over to the left here there's a link to all the back issues, there's some neat stuff in there, check it out if you care to. If you only look at one issue, check out Volume 1, Number 13, which came out around Halloween and dealt with the dark side of technology. Because it isn't all love and flowers out here in technopolis. And we are already seeing some of the bad side affects of unquestioning adoption of technological solutions in global warming, urban gridlock, and I'm a little uneasy about the unquestioning adoption of genetically modified crops. When you start messing with complex systems, you can get some pretty complex results.
I've got my fingers crossed, and I watch in wonder at our power over ourselves and over our environment. Earth will abide, time there counted as it is in vast millenia; I am not so sure about our continued well-being on planet earth. This is not all speculation on my part: the picture with regards to global warming is not pretty, see my previous posting regarding that can o' worms. I could go on (and on and on) -- but I won't. I'll just keep on blogging, the earth will keep on spinning, and we'll just see about everything else.
1:15:30 AM 
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