The Spirograph Generation
 

I am part of the Spirograph generation. That means I have highly developed skills in drawing complex, purposeless patterns. As a child I owned an Atari 2600, with cornea-burning pixels the size of pencil erasers, and control paddles that eventually curled the fingers into rigid claw-like appendages (which made playing Spirograph very difficult). But Space Invaders gave me awe-inspiring claw-eye coordination. I also had a Big Loader playset which taught me how to efficiently exhaust a supply D-size batteries with no useful or entertaining purpose.

Nothing ever happened to my generation to make us bitter, and that is why we are bitter. So we cling to our Pez, our synthesized rock music, and the original unadulterated Star Wars trilogy with a superior aire, and fling proverbial rocks into the traffic of society. I have seen my share of horrors... I was there for Crystal Pepsi. I WAS THERE for the Chevy Chase show. I owned a rotary phone, and for a time it was beautiful.

I even remember when the Internet was fresh and new, like an unused fabric softener sheet. Chat rooms were an amusing curiosity before they became minefields full of pedophiles and cybersex junkies. People online really were interesting rather than just being skilled at pretending to be. I remember having an engaging online conversation with a fellow in Brussels about computer technology, and NOT ONCE was the conversation polluted with a colon-dash-panenthase combination to communicate our mood... we used WORDS, damnit! Mysterious acronyms such as "LOL" were beginning to appear, but it was unfashionable to ask what they meant, so untangling an acronym-slinger's rantings was a bit like groping for cheetos in a bucket of pancake syrup until you got a handle on what most of them meant.

Then came e-commerce, and with it the endless tacking of "e-" or "i-" to the beginning of every word that had anything to do with the online world. The Internet became a huge obnoxious shopping mall whose abundance of unnecessary, poorly compressed images laughed in the face of the poor dial-up user. All the while, pornography websites quietly fueled the growth of the world wide web from the dark recesses, while online businesses grew fat from the gravy of blind invenstment dollars.

Now the once-great Internet is wounded from the shrapnel of the infamous dot-com burst. Website owners, still unable to grasp that the web doesn't play well with conventional advertising, fill their sites to the bursting point with animated banners, popup ads, and Flash annoyances. Our inboxes succumb to their wounds as SPAM beats them like an old man beaten with a bicycle chain. The once plentiful sea of free information has become a shallow, murky swamp where most of what one finds is worth it's weight in dead slugs, with the list of exceptions shrinking daily.

My point? I haven't got one. This post is worth it's weight in dead slugs.

I remember the internet's first days. I remember seeing commercials for it on TV. I remember my first days scanning through the old chat rooms. I remember BBSs.

But I also realize that contrary to popular image, that world has not disappeared. It has simply stayed where it was, while everyone else went on to flashier, prettier things. The intelligent people are out there, and in fair abundance. You simply have to know where to look.

I loved my Spirograph! And Crystal Pepsi.

For the record, I like to keep Sycamoreland as simple as possible.

You know, our very own cellar is not a bad representation of "the good old days" of the Internet. While we now have a web interface with smilies and photoshopped stuff, the bulk of the interaction is text-based. And what content there is here is generated by the denizens, much as was (and still is) the case on Usenet. We're not coming here to read what some "content provider" has put out, we're coming to read what other people have to say.

So tell us more about the Spirograph link, pastrami. I really like the Spirograph, or liked at least. The ones they have now are pale imitations of the set I had back in the late 70s--not as many wheels, and harder to use because they move around. (The old sets actually came with a piece of cardboard and some pushpins to keep the rings in place, something which is far, far too dangerous to expose modern litigious consumers to.) But I've never thought of the Spirograph as a touchstone of any kind of generational divide.

I very much agree with the sentiment that the Cellar is an example of something worthwhile on today's Internet, it is indeed one of the exceptions. Not a banner ad to be seen... just straightfoward, unobtusive communication where intellects are many, but you still can't swing a dead cat without hitting some user who can't even spell "unobtrusive." But spelling and grammar are secondary, as I am personally and frequently keen to illustrate.

I don't know where the Spirograph link came from, honestly... I don't know where ANY of that came from... I was just blithering randomly, as I tend to do on occasion. Spirograph was neat though, wasn't it? The sets which lie languidly on store shelves today, seducing us with their glossy cardboard boxes, are really just superficially beautiful, they lack the character of the original sets.

And remember the Speak-and-Spell from Texas Instruments? Do they still make those? My Speak-and-Spell was all that kept me going on some of those long summer afternoons after I was forced to kill all of my imaginary friends. Sorry, but my stroll down memory lane is becoming a brisk jog. Or at least a good, hearty power walk.

"Admitting to having liked Crystal Pepsi," the old man muttered quietly to himself, "is a sure sign of a troubled, tortured mind."

Say it, spell it. Select level. Two. Spelling. Select Mode.

Spell pear.

Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee. You. Are. A. Pee. Pee. Pee. Pee. Apostrophe. Apostrophe. Apostrophe. Apostrophe. Apostrophe.

At least, that's how mine always went. :)

Did yours start talking to everybody about you behind your back too?

(I didn't like Crystal Pepsi, but I DID groove on Aspen ...)