Dot
Com
"Dot
com, dot com." She was uttering
it like a mantra. "Dot com,
dot com."
I
was startled. This is my little
two year old, the same girl
who only recently recognized
"big trucks" and "airplanes."
Now she's uttering "dot com"
You
see, I remember the "e" dark
ages like it was yesterday,
the ancient time before the
rise and wildfire spread of
the internet. It was 1995
and a friend was having a
Super Bowl party. Among the
invited guests were several
mutual friend who were all
working on engineering doctorates.
Of
course, being engineers, they
were not content with merely
watching a bunch of football
players march up and down
the field - they also had
to play their own game. Like
most engineering social activities,
it involved alcohol, several
Monty Python references, and
the obligatory high-tech jargon
that allowed them to laugh
at things that the rest of
us would need to have explained.
After a few beers, three or
four of them would happily
gather in a circle like a
pack of hyenas or Hamlet's
witches and, with voices rising
to fever pitch, simultaneously
explain any question that
one might have about Doppler
shifts, quantum physics or
gaffer's tape. But that's
a different story.
One
of the elements of their Super
Bowl game was to guess the
number of advertisements during
the Super Bowl that would
display a www url.
"A
what?" I asked.
The
call had been sounded. The
engineers gathered. Bubble
bubble toil and trouble.
"A
uniform resource locator for
the world wide web" my best
friend John patiently explained
while giving knowing looks
to the rest of the engineers
who all grinned, waiting for
a follow-up question, their
chance at the prey.
"The
what?" I asked.
"The
world wide web" they cackled,
then proceeded to explain
in great detail with 27 8x10
color glossy pictures with
circles and arrows and a paragraph
on the back of each one the
history of the internet on
university campuses, telnet,
bulletin boards and this cool
new visual interface that
allowed people to post information
in an attractive and functional
way.
They
might as well have been describing
muons for all I knew.
A
month later John actually
convinced me to let him create
a website for the band. It
was fun to have and John and
I looked at it a lot. We were
probably the only ones.
Now,
of course, the internet is
everywhere. The leetotten.com
website has gone through three
or four major overhauls, I've
learned to write my own html,
and pretty much every advertisement
you see during the Super Bowl
has a www url on it. If I
want, I can even check my
email through my cell phone.
Admittedly,
my generation has lived through
the emergence of several technologies.
PCs have been a part of my
life since junior high. VCRs
were freshman year of high
school. CDs established themselves
when I was a freshman in college
and cell phones became prevalent
around junior year.
But
there's something about the
internet explosion that is
staggering. It was so fast,
so pervasive, so complete.
"Dot
com, dot com." She's still
reciting the afterword of
the new millennium. Just less
than 24 months on this planet
and she already knows her
ABCs, she can count to ten,
and she recites internet lexicon.
"Dot com, dot com." She pauses,
spying me typing on the computer.
She tilts her curly golden-blonde
head sideways and scrunches
up her face to study me.
"Dada"
she says, innocent as an angel,
"check email?"
This
column © 2000 Lee Totten
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