Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Birthday to us

"We're only here," says Russell Brown, editor of Planet, at 32 the father of two and no longer a youth, "because of new technology. And a sense of community."

The potential of this new technology is such that Brown expects to have portions of Planet available "on-line" within a year, giving computer users access to sections of the magazine on-screen through Internet, an information superhighway with an estimated 40 million patrons. One day, he would like to move into CD-ROM technology, allowing Planet punters not only to read about music but to listen to it and even to watch video extracts on screen.
From Computers, Coffee, Contacts - an article in the October 1994 issue of Metro by Andrew Heal. You will note not only Mr Brown's prescience but also the correct form for the word Internet.

In other news, the Fundy Post is now two years old.

12 comments:

Giovanni Tiso said...

I love the quotation marks either side of on-line. Recently I chanced upon a blog comment from three or so years ago whose author namechecked Wikipedia and felt the need to explain that it was "a free online encyclopedia". We still had Usenet back then...

Happy birthday, I'm uncorking a bottle of cake for the occasion.

Robyn said...

I don't capitalise internet for the same reason I don't capitalise television, radio or interpretive dance.

(I once heard that internet should be capitalised to show that it's *the* internet and not just any old internet. But what, outside of academia, is an internet? Yeah.

Hey, I remember CD-ROM magazines. They made sense back in the days of dial-up. Now we're seeing the features of CD-ROM mags online (note, not "on-line") but not in one place - one site has the music, another site has the video interviews, another site has the whooshy clicky bits.

Also, happy blogday. I'd buy you a present but I hear all the cool kids aren't buying presents due to the Current Economic Situation.

Giovanni Tiso said...

That reminds me: does anybody remember that tome that Microsoft put out in the eighties called "CD-ROM: The New Papyrus"? The papyrus lasted as a medium for five thousand years, give or take a couple of weeks. The Cd-ROM... not so much.

Amanda said...

Very happy birthday. Good work and keep it up. Enjoy the "terrible twos"

Lyndon said...

I think it was Mr Brown tells a story about when he started on his computer column at the listener. Some persistently wanted to know why he kept writing about this Internet thing and not CD-ROMs.

stephen said...

Happy blog birthday, Paul. The Fundy Post is among my few online reading mainstays. I am not always a fan of the message (though I mostly) but your command of the medium is complete, and your droll acerbic prose is something I admire even as I find it unachievable. I dream of the day I wake up to find that the Sunday newspapers have sacked their columnists and appointed you instead.

Jordan Carter said...

What I love best about your writing is the total command of the language. You make me smile, think and sometimes even laugh - simultaneously!

Congrats and thanks and keep it up.

Anonymous said...

The citation from Metro raises many thoughts for me, including the way in which those now in their thirties might blanch at the attribution "no longer a youth" (we may be indifferently talented but we are tenacious), and remembering at the same time the sad fact that the article's author would not himself see thirty.

For the chronic aesthete, however, it is this blog's tracing of the wavy line that may or may not separate elite and mass culture, politics and asceticism, wine-women-and-song, that should be celebrated in its anniversary.

To this latter end, therefore, I offer a small, pulsing piece of youtubery, and my upraised glass.

Grace Dalley said...

Hi Paul

I haven't been reading here long, but I just wanted to say you have a kickass blog, and I certainly will be reading here in future. More! More!

Paul said...

Thank you, all, for your kind comments. I am still blushing

Giovanni Tiso said...

I am still blushing

I demand proof: can you post a picture?

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling said...

Welcome to the "terrible two's". - 2 human years being the equivalent of 32 blog years.