Aiming at Nothing

When I first saw “the web,” I was working for a hi-tech company. A co-worker of mine dropped by my cubicle all excited about this new thing he had seen. He was talking about the NSCA Mosaic HTTP browser. I don’t remember what version we had running, but it was UNIX-based and displayed through Xwindows of some flavor. Stones, knives and bear skins by today’s standards.

The first site I saw featured LEGO products. It might have been put up by the corporation or it might have been made by an enthusiast of the little plastic blocks but, whichever it was, I wasn’t impressed. I thought, “What good is this? What would anyone use this for?” …Such brilliant insight helps to explain why I’m not a multi-gazillionare today.

I created my first web site in about 1996, if memory serves. A local ISP offered all of the necessary and (at the time) cutting edge tools for creating and serving web content. By this time I was beginning to “get it,” although I still saw the web as some kind of geeky toy. Just being able to do something that many of my friends could not brought its own taped-glasses, laugh-snorting, nerdy pleasure.

I taught myself to write html (hyper-text markup language) from scratch and, later, to use tag-based authoring software and syntax checkers. Very slowly I was able to move away from the strict technical challenge of pages that said, “HEY I HAVE A WEB PAGE,” to attempting interesting (to me, family members and friends anyway) content.

Nowadays it seems that everyone has a web page, everyone has listings of their favorite bands, everyone has pictures of their dogs and kids and motorcycles… why should I even try? Because, I never know who might be watching.

And so, it is for you — whoever you are — that I toil away at this self-congratulatory endeavor. Here’s hoping that at least something here brings a smile or a nod or perhaps even sends you into a blind rage. As long as I get a reaction, I’m happy.

All the world is a stage… and it’s your turn to sweep.