email was invented by a mr. tomlinson, without him giving much thought to the matter, at the time.

digitalmuse had this to say, and i found it fitting:

hmmm, e-mail is older than I am (26yrs). and I measure myself through the things I’ve seen. I remember Ronald Reagan as a very young child. I recall my parent’s last throes of back-to-the-land/cold-war self-sufficiency. I was astounded as the first Space Shuttle launch took us around the earth and flew us back home on wings. I was glued to the TVs when the Challenger exploded. I was there when faxes were pasted hourly on the walls of Boston’s chinatown as Tiananmen square unfolded.

I lost friends in an act of terrorism that the world had never seen before, or even believed possible outside of cheap paperback fiction.

I have done all these things at a distance, I have made friends and effected change on continents that I may never visit.

I have dipped my toes in the greater waters of mankind.

All this in less than 30 years.

How will my children look back when they are my age?

Will they remember a world before the arrival of the metaverse that allows them to interact around the world, regardless of language, race, time, or class?

Will they look back with sepia-toned memories of the good-old days before corporate structures replaced government?

Might they think of us with scorn, as those who poisoned the earth and water that they inherited?

Or will they think of us as the generation that first tasted this fruit of true communication, and were alternately torn and brought together by it.

pioneers in a digital age where the hot metal was still fluid and a malleable medium, filling gaps and voids in the mold of society.

what will someone say about us in 30 years.

what do we want to leave as our legacy for our children,

food for thought.

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