Life as we know it, edition 4 has just been published. Once a month Fairly regularly, Peter and I along with a host of collaborating authors put together a little journal primarily because we think storytelling is important.
For the first time it includes an article by yours truly, snappily entitled “Twitter and The Great Unwashed: how “normal” people ruined The Internet for the rest of us.”
A brief intro here, I’ll publish the (slightly ranty, a bit geeky) article in full here in a few weeks.
Once upon a time, everything was simpler
A friendship was a construct based on shared memories and experience. The web was one of many, and it hung between idle walls. A tablet was something that came in a packet of 16 and the internet was the demesne of nuclear scientists and the military.
The Commodore and Atari era eluded me, too young and more interested in working out how to stand on my bike while stationary and climbing the horse chestnut tree. A green screened Amstrad was my first computer. It was used for accounts, not mine, and writing. Two front-loaded disks and a distinct lack of entertainment ensued. To play a game it had to be ‘loaded’, not by disk, not by air… a different experience to the application store process of today. A few hours of typing left you with a glitchy but functional circa 1990 version of Donkey Kong without splashing out on the original Nintendo… which eventually was bought.
The darling of 2010, Angry Birds, this was not. There was no point and click, and drag and fling. This took effort and you earned reward. Auto-save did not exist.
So, please read the journal at your leisure; and please like it on Facebook or follow on Twitter.