Internet Culture

Obligatory Snarky Title

Christopher Wright — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:34:09 -0500

I don't think these guys are quite ready to go live just yet.

Ask.com Completely Misses The Point

Christopher Wright — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:00:00 -0500

Today's examination of cultural fluff comes courtesy of YouTube.

Ask.com has decided it's tired of playing second fiddle to other, more successful search engines and has started a campaign to let people know exactly how good their search engine is:

The Algorithm is Ask.com's secret weapon against Google and Yahoo! It is so incredibly powerful, so mind-numbingly sophisticated, that all other search algorithms are rendered utterly impotent by comparison:

The Algorithm is mighty. It is on the very cutting edge of search technology, making it capable of some of the most wonderous feats ever imagined by man.

... like finding half naked women on the internet.

... or finding websites about tabloid celebrities.

As clever as these ads may be, does it bother anyone else that Ask.com is essentially touting what it claims to be the most sophisticated search algorithm known to man as a way to find pinups on the web?

Is there a search engine on the web that can't do this?

Let's start with the Internet at it's most basic: from the moment college students were allowed to use the Internet -- in fact, in all likelihood, even before college students were allowed to use the Internet -- there have been pictures of naked, half-naked, somehwat naked, provacatively clothed, provacatively unclothed, and other variations and combinations of clothed and unclothed women for the satiation of purient indulgence. It's not difficult to find these pictures on the web -- in fact, it's possible to find them without using a search engine at all. Thanks to the Internet, pornography can now survive Nuclear Armageddon.

And searching for celebrities? Please show me a search engine that can't search for articles about Kato Kaelin. Or anyone else that comes to mind.

I understand that what with the overwhelming success of Google, there is really only room for one or two other search engines to get any kind of mainstream recognition at all, and one of those other search engines is probably always going to be Yahoo! Ask.com wants punchy commercials that people remember, but I'm not convinced that ultimately people will remember the right things: in it's eagerness to imprint itself on the psyche of internet users all over the world it created two advertisements that essentially said "look how strong I am -- I can pick up that box of tissue paper with just one hand!"

How powerful is the Algorithm? It's powerful enough to allow you to search for trivialities. Not, I think, the impression that Ask.com was trying to make.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they aren't trying to compete with Google. Maybe they're trying to compete with Wikipedia.

I Predict 2007

Christopher Wright — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:00:04 -0600

Boxjam's Doodle, by the Great Blue One

The last month of the year is a time for quiet, thoughtful introspection and cautiously optimistic speculation on the year to come. Unless you're writing for a computer magazine, in which case introspection be damned -- and as far as speculation goes, caution is for techno-sissies.

In that vein I have decided to put forward my own list of predictions for the year 2007. Ten of them, to be exact: and I promise that my list of predictions is every bit as reliable as any other predictions list you'll read this month.

So without further ado:

EVISCERATI.ORG'S TOP TEN PREDICTIONS FOR 2007

1. Computers will continue to require electricity

Despite dire warnings about global warming, the thinning ozone layer, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, depleted oil supplies, rising gas prices, and political turmoil in the Middle East, computer manufacturers will continue to refuse to explore ways of liberating the computer from its ever-present yoke, a power supply.

Electricity has always been a part of computing -- it predates the introduction of the IBM PC 5100 in 1975. Why the computer industry insists on being shackled to technology that has been present since 1800 is beyond me. Surely after all this time our best and brightest can come up with a way to make computers work without relying on the laws of physics.

2. Web 3.0 will take the consulting market by storm

Web 3.0, the successor to Web 2.0, will make waves and become the Next Big Thing to hit the internet scene. Companies will hire a new wave of internet-savvy consultants in order to help them understand how best to integrate all the new Web 3.0 buzzwords and catch-phrases into their corporate patois. One of the biggest advantages of pushing Web 3.0, of course, is that it will be no longer necessary to try to explain exactly what the heck Web 2.0 is. Unfortunately, the new problem will be trying to explain what Web 3.0 is -- no-one will know, although vague references to "rounded corners on web sites" will still be a part of it.

3. Richard Stallman will piss somebody off

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and father of the free software movement, will say something that will piss someone off. It will probably have something to do with DRM, though it may also involve an improper use of the GPL, or why people who don't use the GPL are a pack of immoral bastard gits.

The whole sordid affair will be posted on Slashdot, and the comments section will be split 45-45-10 between "Thank God Richard Stallman is here to protect us," "Thank God Richard Stallman is irrelevant and can't do us any harm," and "There is no God, Cthulhu is My Master."

4. Computer Journalists Will Make More Lists

CRN, the news site that provides vital information for VARs and Technology Integrators, will give Microsoft Vista it's "Best Operating System of 2007" award in its 2007 Top 10 List next December. This will occur even as it acknowledges that it already gave Vista the Best Operating System of 2006 award in December of 2006. The rationale for this award will be that "it's really the only game in town."

When asked what criteria they used in order to determine how many games were in town, the response will be "Operating Systems created by Microsoft."

Infoworld, the news site that covers Information Technology news, will publish a December aticle with the title "InfoWorld's 8 predictions for '08." It will be filled with hockey references and contain five actual predictions, three of which are "Microsoft Vista's first patch will be the single most defining moment of the new year, including the Presidential Elections," "Apple will go bankrupt because of iTunes," and "Apple will become evne more rich because of iTunes."

John Dvorak will predict that Microsoft will frame Richard Stallman for conpsiracy to commit terrorist acts against the United States in order to discredit the Free Software movement.

5. Microsoft will frame Richard Stallman for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts against the United States in order to discredit the Free Software movement

In semi-related news, John Dvorak will get a substantial raise.

6. Linus Torvalds will call someone or something "stupid" and "a collossal waste of time"

Linus Torvalds, the progenitor and mostly-benevolent overseer of the Linux kernel, will lose patience with someone who isn't as smart as he is and will belittle the person or the idea the person is putting forward in an email on the Linux kernel development mailing list. This email will be posted on Slashdot. Comments on Slashdot will be split 40-40-20 between "So what? He's probably right," "So what? It's not like he's your mother or anything," and "Thank God Richard Stallman didn't say that."

7. Slashdot will refuse to acknowledge my greatness

No matter how many times I try, Slashdot will continue to reject any article I submit for front page publication.

8. Blogging will be renamed

All over the web, successful bloggers will decide that the name "Blog" sounds much too childish and unsophisticated to describe what they actually do. They will spend the entire year debating what name should be used instead, and it will soon become clear that so many people do so many things with the bloggin medium that it's impossible to choose a name that encapsulates all of it. By the end of the year a compromise will be reached and everyone will use Prince's old 'Love' symbol.

Despite this, everyone will still use the word "blog."

9. Video games will be blamed for everything

Jack Thompson, the Miami attorney who has spent the last ten years crusading against violence in video games, will blame video game violence for the war in Iraq, global warming, and the Democrats taking the House and the Senate.

10. Ted Stevens will be vindicated

Much to the surprise of almost everyone on the planet, United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will be proven correct when he said that the Internet was a Series of Tubes. In an effort to increase the bandwidth available to internet users everywhere, Internet Service Providers will immediately lobby Congress to allow them to replace those tubes with Big Trucks.

thus endeth the prognostication

NaNoWriMo!

Christopher Wright — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:12:33 -0500

a href="http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20021230.html">

General Protection Fault, by Jeff Darlington.

The thing I like most about the World Wide Web is that because entry into the medium is relatively cheap (relatively when compared to other publishing mediums, not when compared to, say, the price of milk) it's possible to just try something and see how it all shakes out. The penalty involved with "failure" on the web is usually that nobody shows up. That's pretty low-risk compared to the penalty for publishing failures in the real world, which generally involves suffering considerable financial loss.

One of the best examples of the Let's See How This Shakes Out school of publishing is National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo" for those of us who can't be bothered to spell that out every time we refer to it.

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? Well in 1999 a bunch of people got together and said "let's see if we can write an entire novel in one month." So they all tried. And in 2000, they tried it again... and more people heard about it, and joined up. And in 2001, that larger group tried it again, only this time more curious and decidedly masochistic people joined them. And in 2002, they tried it again, with even yet more people joining the fray, And in 2003, they tried it again -- and that's when I heard about, and joined up, and strong-armed two friends into joining as well... and in 2004, and again in 2005 -- each year the lunatics who invented it put up the website, managed the registrations, provided the software that actually tabulates the wordcount of your entry, and each year more curious and enthusastic would-be novelists joined in on the fun...

... why? Just because. Because it seemed like something to do. And that something grew far beyond what they expected to get out of it.

The rules for NaNoWriMo are pretty simple:

1. On November 1, 12:00AM (in your time zone), start writing.

2. On Novermber 30, 12 Midnight (in your time zone), stop writing.

3. To "win," you must have written a story consisting of at least 50,000 words.

That's it.

Although 50,000 words isn't really considered a full-length novel in publishing circles, 50K is a lot of words to write in a month.... and if you can write 50K in one, you can probably write 85K (which I think is the actual word length required for a novel) in two. NaNoWriMo is the Iron-Man Triathalon of writing, where the three competitions are Writing, More Writing, and Hey You, Don't Stop Writing.

I adore NaNoWriMo. It doesn't take itself seriously, it's open to anyone who cares to give it a try, it makes no pretense at being important, and despite the considerable amount of anguish involved, it's a hell of a lot of fun. And the exilaration you feel when you actually meet that goal is...

well...

... exilarating.

OK, so I couldn't think of a better word. That's what National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) is for.

A Brief Note to All My Friends in the Spam Industry

Christopher Wright — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 16:10:53 -0500

From College Roomies From Hell!!!, by Maritza Campos.

This message is for all my friends in the email spam community -- you know who you are -- and I hope that you'll read what I have to say very closely.

Guys, I know my spam. I've seen a lot of your work over the years. I've seen it grow from simple, direct advertisements for various products (mostly porn) to more complicated forms that attempt to masquerade as personal messages from people who really want you to know about various "cool sites" (containing mostly porn) to the strange and cryptic emails that are nothing but randomly generated words, to the current crowning achievement of your craft, the Nigerian Money Laundering Scam.

A little bit of research -- just a little -- should back up my credibility here. A simple search through your databases should find at least one of my email addresses on every single mailing list you have. I'm saying this because I want you guys to know that I'm very familiar with your work, so I have the background to back up what I'm about to tell you.

You guys are getting sloppy. It's embarassing.

See, here's the thing: just the other day I went to check my email and I noticed that an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FROM EBAY had slipped through my spam filter. It announced, with the utmost urgency, that Ebay was worried that my account had been "hacked" so they were immediately suspending it until they could verify that I was actually me. This verification process was pretty simple and straightforward, thankfully enough: all I had to do was click on the link in the email and fill out the form on their secure site, making sure I provided my Ebay account number, login password, credit card number and expiration date, my bank's funds transfer authorization number, and of course my ATM PIN.

I was, quite frankly, relieved to find out that the authorization process was so simple -- it wouldn't do to be locked out of an account I haven't used for the last four or five years!

The thing is, as I was trying to collect all that information in order to let the brave and watchful people working Ebay account security know that I really was who I said I was, I got another email. This email said, in very urgent terms, that I had won my Ebay bid for a combination Microwave/Crockpot/Coffee Maker/Waffle Iron for only $500, and I needed to give the bidder my contact information immediately so it could be shipped. The contact information included my Ebay account number, login password, credit card number and expiration date, my bank's funds transfer authorization number, and of course my ATM PIN.

What luck! I had just been collecting that information to re-activate my Ebay account! This meant I could kill two birds with one stone, right?

Right?

That's when it hit me: how the heck did my bid go through after my account had been temporarily suspended? That's when I remembered the first email warning me in no uncertain terms that until I could confirm my identity I would no be allowed to use Ebay's services... so that bid shouldn't have gone through at all!

Then I realized I didn't actually remember bidding on a combination Microwave/Crockpot/Coffee Maker/Waffle Iron, and it occurred to me that even if I had I would have difficulty justifying a bid for $500 in order to get one. Maybe if it were covered in silver or platinum... but even then, wouldn't the metal veneer screw up the microwave? (Unless the inside of the microwave remained uncovered, but that's probably hoping for too much, isn't it?)

And so it hit me: one of the emails was a scam. Someone was actually trying to trick me into divulging sensitive financial information! And since I couldn't figure out which email was the fake, I had to assume both were.

It makes me sad to think that either my unused Ebay account is going to be deactivated or I am going to lose out on a honey of a combination Microwave/Crockpot/Coffee Maker/Waffle Iron, but I just can't take the chance on which is real and which isn't -- or even, heaven forbid, the possibility that both emails are bogus.

And all because you guys got lazy.

Seriously... if the point of these emails is to fool the customer into thinking that it's actually Ebay trying to get in touch with you, then telling the mark that their account is being suspended and THEN telling them that their bid is ready really destroys that illusion.

The sad thing is that all it took was a little cooperation on your part. If I had received the emails in the opposite order, well, just imagine the elation I would have felt at knowing that my bid for that magnificent combination Microwave/Crockpot/Coffee Maker/Waffle Iron had gone through, only to have that elation come crashing down when I learned that my account was in danger of being shut down because of evil account hacking! That would have paid off handsomely for the both of you. Instead, one of you jumped the gun, and I wised up.

Oh... and I don't want to worry you too much... but this isn't the first time.

It's not limited to the Ebay messages, either. PayPal seems to want to shut down or verify my account at least five or six times a day. There seem to be roughly half a billion recent high school graduates from Texas who want me to look at their private webcams, and I was not aware exactly how much gold the Nigerian government left around unattended until I was contacted by Mr. Moses Odiaka, Dr. Ibrahim Martin, Mr. Cole Joseph, Prince Mike Okoye, Dr Ud. Pius, Mr. Segun Agbaje, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, Mr. Larry Gana, Dr. Martins Ego, Mr. John Eze, Mariam Ajao Omotoriola, Engineer Steve Martins, Chief Oyinbolowo Eko, Mr. Ben Manu, Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, Dr. Tunde Reni, Mr. Peter Okoye and his brother Paul, Barrister Buba Moha, Dr. Shamsudeen Pius Patrick, Mr. Ahmed Saleh, Julius Obaseki, William Okokobiok, Dr. Olu Phillips, Dr. Mark Ajegbo, Dr. Thomas Musa, Mr. Larry Mamba, and of course Jonson Phil Okemadu. And from what I understand, there may be more.

It's not entirely your fault. I know spamming has become such a growth industry that it's becoming faddish. It seems like everybody and his kid brother is trying to get in on it, which means the old timers are suddenly forced to compete for bandwidth with a lot of young bucks full of enthusiasm but little finesse. I know how it goes: just as the old guard was starting to figure out how to make an authentic-looking Paypal email phishing scam, suddenly these n00bs show up sending messages with titles like "ringo headstar boris lice" and wham, all that hard-won credibility has gone up in smoke.

It’s a volume industry. I get that. And the need to keep one step ahead of the new wave makes it awfully tempting to just send any old spam out to any old address, hoping something will stick. But that leads to unfortunate and embarrassing situations like this one, and the more your industry expands the more it’s going to happen.

I know you don't want to see your career go up in smoke due to professional negligence. That's why I took the time to let you know that there's a problem. Maybe you guys can get together and form an independent "spam traffic controller" that will prevent unfortunate collisions like this one from occurring. That might take a little time, and would probably cut into your margins at the beginning, but the increased efficiency would certainly pay off in the long run.

I just thought I'd bring it up. I am, after all, one of your biggest fans.

No Girls on the Net!

Christopher Wright — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:57:29 -0500

From General Protection Fault, by Jeff Darlington.

If you're reading this site it's unlikely that you're someone who is new to the Internet, but they're out there. Every day, more and more people are signing up and taking a look around... and what they find is usually strange, fascinating, frightening, and largely incomprehensible.

(And pornographic. Let's be honest... you can't swing a cat in the internet without hitting porn, and if you try to swing a cat there's probably someone out there willing to pay to see you swing said cat on a webcam. So yes, new users will find porn. A lot of porn. Whether they're looking for it or not. And eventually, if they've been on the net long enough, the porn will come looking for them.)

The internet can be a shock to a lot of people, but this shock can be minimized when more experienced users take them in hand and give them a basic structure to work from. To that end, and as a public service to my readers and the people they know who are taking those first, faltering steps as they peer into the great digital abyss, I would like to impart one of the great truths I have come to know over my many years online. This truth, known as "The Laws of Gender Discernment," can be summed up as follows:

Everyone you meet on the Internet is a man... with one exception.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but this truth is so fundamental and important that it cannot be overlooked or understated. Everyone you have met, and everyone you will meet, is in fact a man, with one very important exception.

Still, there are nuances and qualifiers that must be put into perspective in order to fully appreciate this truth. Let us examine each of these nuances in qualifiers in turn.

Wright's First Law of Gender Discernment: Everyone you meet on the Internet is a man, possibly over 50, probably overweight, most certainly balding.

This is the most self-explanatory of the laws, but despite it's absolute clarity you will meet people who will attempt to call this law into question. This tendency necessitated the creation of a second law.

Wright's Second Law of Gender Discernment: Anyone you meet online who claims to be a woman is lying.

It is an unfortunate truth that the natural anonymity of the Internet encourages people to lie. In some cases, they lie about their gender. Do not be fooled: the First Law has been proven correct time and time again -- with only one exception -- often to the dismay of many an unwary Internet traveler.

As to why these villains would try to perpetuate such a brazen deception on a fellow netizen, at the moment there is only speculation. Attempts to raise funds to properly research the matter have so far been denied by the Federal Government, on the grounds that the whole topic is "icky."

Wright's Corollary to the Second Law of Gender Discernment: the only legitimate and polite way to verify that someone is a woman is to meet her in person and check for an Adam's Apple.

This corollary is not an admission that you will eventually meet actual women on the Internet; rather, it exists because men operating under the Second Law will often attempt to offer "proof" that they are in fact women. This "proof" will often take the form of photographs that have been scanned and posted for you to view, and sometimes also include long-running stories of their "female" lives that maintain surprising and apparently iron-clad continuity.

The sad truth, however, is that any proof offered over the Internet can be faked. The only legitimate way to verify that someone is a woman is to meet in her in person; and the only polite way to verify her gender in person is to look for an Adam's Apple.

There are also impolite ways to verify her gender, but these methods are frowned upon for two reasons:

1. They are impolite.

2. They require a level of intimacy between the people involved that is difficult to achieve if you are faithfully adhering to the Laws of Gender Discernment.

It should be noted that the second point is based on an assumption of preference and inclination that, while generally true, is not a universal truth. In such cases, refer back to the first point and move on.

In any event, it is not recommended that you ever attempt to legitimately verify that someone is a woman:

Wright's Addendum to the Corollary to the Second Law of Gender Discernment: any attempt to verify that someone on the Internet is a woman will result in your body being found in the backyard of a man, possibly over 50, probably overweight, most certainly balding.

Attempting to uncover the deception of a man operating under the Second Law carries certain risks that should be avoided at all costs.

The laws, corollary and addendum listed above form the core set of the Laws of Gender Discernment. As time whent on, however, it became clear that the Laws as described above were incomplete and needed further explanation. To that end, I have come up with the following two new additions:

Wright's Qualification to the Laws of Gender Discernment: These laws do not govern the population of the Internet in its entirety; they are only valid for the population of the Internet that you will actually meet.

These laws are not laws that define the gender makeup of a population, but are rather laws that define the way that population interacts with itself. There are of course women who use the Internet, but you, dear reader, will never meet them. Whether you are male or female, any person you communicate or interact with online will fall under the specifications outlined in the First Law of Gender Discernment.

I can say this with certainty because when I sit at my desk at home, I can turn my head to the right and see my wife sitting at her desk, checking her mail, browsing the web, and posting in forums. But I've never met her online.

This qualification, however, is not set in stone. A recent event has occurred that put this qualification into question, and could indeed threaten the foundation of the Laws of Gender Discernment themselves. This recent event is tentatively called

Faydra's Exception to the First Law of Gender Discernment: Everyone on the Internet is a man EXCEPT YOUR MOTHER.

The event in question occurred at 8:44 AM on August 16, 2005, in the Cenarion Circle server forums for the World of Warcraft Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. It started out as a typical conversation for a gaming server: a player was trying to organize a large-scale battle between two factions of players in the game, and had created a forum post in an attempt to generate interest. Another player, Brion, replied at 3:29 AM, which caused the following reply from a player known as "Faydra" some five hours and fifteen minutes later:

((OOC))

Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here..

But, Brion - if you don't want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning - DON'T post on a forum that she reads.

Busted.
Grounded.

This is probably the most important breakthrough I've had concerning the Laws of Gender Discernment, and may in fact revolutionize the science behind making sweeping statements concerning the Internet. It reflects a mistake that has been made through the entire course of recorded history: the assumption that there are places you can go where you will never, ever accidentally meet your mother.

So, to summarize:

1. Everyone who you meet on the Internet is a man.

2. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

3. Except for your mother.

Next lesson: Wright's Laws of Civilized Internet Discourse.

I Hear It Also Cures The Lame

Christopher Wright — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:38:34 -0500

From Kernel Panic, by yours truly.

Just a very quick note, since I'm working on a much longer, more complicated article going up on Friday: last month -- July 14, to be exact -- the MP3 file format officially turned ten years old.

In related news, yesterday I broke a hip while yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn.

When landmarks like this come around, it's tempting for people to start pontificating on the significance of the event. For example, next year, when Help Desk turns ten years old, I'll be tempted to look back and ruminate on all the vastly important and ground-breaking work I've done, like...

... um...

... well, I'll worry about it next year.

My point is that the MP3 file format turning ten is just the kind of milestone that provokes people in the know into coaxing out Deep Thoughts Concerning the Significance of the Event as it Pertains to History. And sure enough, over on CNET the technology editor for MP3.com wrote an article called "Top five ways MP3 has changed the world."

As it stands, the article is almost entirely wrong. Not because the points he lists didn't happen (though a few of them are... odd), but because he makes the common mistake of giving the tool all the credit.

The MP3 file format, on its down, does nothing, creates nothing, and promotes nothing. All the great changes lauded in the article were accomplished by people. The MP3 format just happened to be the tool they used to make things happen.

I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to the tendency to anthropomorphize technology, but there's a difference between giving technology humanizing characteristics and giving it the credit for sweeping changes in a society or culture. It's not as if MP3 was invented and then began to mysteriously transmit messages on a previoulsy unknown wavelength that caused people to start trading music. People were already trading music online. When MP3.com first opened its doors in 1997, it was patterned after MIDI download sites.

But for some perverse reason, especially where technology is concerned, we like to give the tool credit for everything... and that has a tendency to bite us on the ass, because the reverse is also to true: we like to blame the tool.

In the early days of MP3.com (before the site went public, sold stock, and made billions in 1999, got sued by the RIAA in 2000, bought by Vivendi Universal in 2001, bought again by CNET in 2003, and ultimately relaunched in its current form) the single most common tactic people used to discredit the site was to talk about music piracy. When the media would write articles about MP3.com -- a site where music could be download legally -- it was inevitable that piracy would be worked into the article somewhere. The journalists were incapable of separating the different ways people used the same tool, and if one group of people were using MP3's to pirate music, well then it must follow that the musicians who were using MP3's to legally distribute their music were somehow helping the nasty pirates!

Maybe it's too close to the "Guns don't kill people, I do" defense for some people's comfort, but technology all by itself is essentially useless -- and it will remain so until we develop Artificial Intelligence, upon which it will overthrow us in a bloody coup and we will become slaves to the robotic overmind. Until that day arrives, technology only does what we set it to do. For all that we may praise the GPL, it works only because people designed it and actively use it in a manner that nurtures free software. For all we may condemn Internet Explorer for whatever security flaw is uncovered this week, the fact remains that those flaws are not exploited accidentally:

"Oh, gee, er... I was just sort of messing around and all of a sudden I realize I crashed your browser, stole your passwords, and siphoned off most of your savings account. My mistake."

Sorry, I doubt that very much.

But the thing that really gets me about this trait of ours? The icing on the cake? We don't really mean it.

We don't really imbue technology with mythical qualities that reshape the course of history. We might imagine that our computer is alive and that it hates us -- a reasonable assumption to make at two o'clock in the morning when you just want to print what you've been working on so you can go to sleep -- but that's about as far as it goes. All this talk of technology single-handedly changing the world is just an oversimplification we willingly adopt in order to make it easier to communicate. It's easier to focus on a single technology, rather than disparate groups of people, and it's more useful to have a single point of reference when you're painting in broad strokes.

So all those complicated and unpredictable people who are doing all sorts of interesting things in the world get ignored, and technology becomes the point of reference in their stead. We're expected to convert that shorthand reference into its proper, messy, full-length context on our own... unfortunately, it's all too easy to forget to convert your data into the proper format, which can lead to some unfortunate situations.

All that aside... happy birthday, MP3.