Homer Simpson’s love of cable has nothing on me

Whilst I have yet to be found stroking my net cable with fond love all day, I am fully aware that although to me it is passive until it breaks and then I’m less than passive. My net connection not only brings my living but it also brings my entertainment and play. I probably have some form of net ‘on’ every hour of the waking day and even if I’m not at home I have my iPhone to hook in with.

On realising your career didn’t exist a short time ago

Whilst most people have roots in their career if you work on the web you really can only look a short while back to see where the origins of your career came from. I’ve often thought what would I have done if the web hadn’t been about. When I started out choosing a career path it didn’t. As I left studying art though it was starting to brew and I could look to train with a handful of courses in it. Before maybe I’d have been a graphic designer, engineer, teach art or have followed through with studying psychology – I honestly don’t really know though as if you take actual computers out of the mix, I really find it hard to think what I’d do if my current career path wasn’t an option.

A world without the web?

If you take a doomsday approach I admit I get a little concerned, you see I really haven’t the foggiest what I’d do if I wasn’t in my current career. All the options I listed really don’t have such an appeal to me as what I do now and none seem to ‘fit’. I don’t have any ‘doomsday net blows up’ plan of action. Maybe I should? Are we all being complacent thinking the net will be here for all time in some evolved form? I can’t really answer that and think it’s perhaps a little alarmist to fixate on for too long. There is always someone shouting about bubbles bursting but the fact is the net crawls along bubble or not.

There are those though who aren’t online, I actually know a few people who don’t even have internet access and a few more who do but clock up maybe a hour or so a week if that. There are more and more parts of the world ‘turning on’ but there still exists a digital divide that you have to take note of. Over time of course this will narrow but we’re certainly not there yet with everyone having the same access and those of us in the industry find it hard to look over our navels and acknowledge this sometimes.

The silent enabler

The net really is one of those silent things that enables so many of us to interact, work and play. We have the social web, we have the professional web, we have online gaming, we have so many ways we use the web to live now. You check your banking online, letters are more and more a rarity with email or instant messaging as the more common forms of communication, we even file our taxes online and do our shopping online. If I think about the off line against online activities I do the online has far more in it. I’m not going to go into if this is a bad thing or not as obviously as I’m happy with my life I don’t see it as a bad thing – I still get out in the world and have a off line life it’s just not as much as my online one partially due to the nature of my career. The net threads through my daily activities enabling me to do so many things.

The articles goes on to outline the possible contract extending to the new codename revolution device from nintendo by the end of 2006. So, is this the future of lan parties? After all I guess bar pizza it’s one of the good ‘ole lan treats (not to forget kfc). As we all hook up and tune out of our surroundings I guess there is no place we can’t forget about and guide our little cyber pooches and mario’s through world’s that let us leave the plastic, grease and hardening arterys.

This still to me has sinister tones. Like in the documentary ‘Super Size Me’, where Morgan Spurlock among other things hinted at the less and healthy Macdiddlies obsession with kids; this to me also sends alarm bells ringing in my head. Who do you really think is the majority player of the DS? What little darling will be able to resist a chance to play wifi stylie while clogging their toxic bodies and spot splattered faces? It sends a shiver down my paranoid conspiracy theory filing cabinet conscious.

Yes, it’s something already in our society. You can go wireless with your expresso, your bagel and probably even in your local laundrette. A chain of wireless laundrettes actually sounds like a viable business plan (excuse me while I mug a backer). However, somehow (even it’s a squint in my consciousness and not right), to me it seems worse when MacDonalds do it. It’s not that I have a thing against wi-fi, far from it considering my job. I think it’s the fact it’s the DS and it’s MacDonalds. Maybe I’ve just not had enough coffee and done to much variable passing today. It just doesn’t sit right with me.

I may have worked a bit hard today, but I haven’t lost it. This odd vision comes from the news today of Bill Gate’s donation to a computer museum as seen in the bbc.co.uk techie news. It states : "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged 15m dollars (8.54m pounds) to the Computer History Museum in California."

I have been thinking about what artifacts there would be in the stated 4,000. I see old acorn electrons (my first computer), bbc puters, amigas and the good ole spectrum (never did get one and still getting therapy about this). Deep blue shoved next to old 186 boxes?

As a note to this if you happen to bother to follow the link to the museum’s site don’t bother if you have firefox. I can’t believe that such a museum would even dare to have a site that only works in IE, but then it is sponsored by Bill Gates.