The World Wide Web is over 40 years old. It is a subset of the Internet which is over 60 years old. We’ve seen a lot of technologies come and go since they were introduced. Dialup barely hangs on the fringes. IRC servers that were solid bedrocks are under questionable control. Those first desktop computers that we tore apart in the living room are dead and gone. We’ve traded them for laptops or tablet or maybe just smart phones and TVs. We are more connected to each other, but are we connected to our technology?
If it were all to fail, would we know any of it would work? For me, the turning point was the iPhone. Not that I blame it. In 2008, we all got the iPhone and sometime later we got Android, and a few oddball phones that never seemed to make it. Granted Blackberry and flip phones had the WWW on it, but the iPhone (and the iPod) really brought things to the forefront. Steve Jobs didn’t make anything new. What he made was that he made it mainstream.
Ten years before, the vast majority of people didn’t have computers. Ten years after, the vast majority of people didn’t have computers. We connect more on our phones than we do with something like an actual keyboard. I grew up in a magical era. We still took typing classes, but needed to have email. Maybe you, a young twenty year old, did the same, but you are the rare bird. In the span of 20 years we went from not knowing how to use computers to not knowing how to use computers. I’ve seen college grads that don’t know how Excel works. I’ve seen news stories talk about Zoom and Zello like those were revolutionary services when in fact they had been out for years.
So, it is always my effort to be a better nerd. Sometimes I forget it. Sometimes I seem to forget it for years on end, but it’s easier than ever to get your own website running. Granted we have platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Geocities, but those are all owned by someone else. Getting a dot com means carving out your own real estate on the World Wide Web. Andy Warhol got it wrong. We don’t get 15 minutes of fame. We get 15 megabytes of fame. We should all claim our birthright. We should all be better nerds.
So, that’s this website. My little shouts into the void. My efforts to be a better nerd. Usually, it contains whatever I am playing with at the time. Or whatever I played with last. I’m breaking these things when I do them. I’m not going to show you where I did something silly like destroy my whole home network, but I might tell you that I did it. This website is me breaking things. Then I tell you what I broke and how I fixed it so you can make much grander mistakes than I ever did. Make mistakes that make your mother proud. This website is about me. I only let you tag along.
Together, maybe we can be a better nerd.