Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Transaction

> What are you doing?

> I don't know. What are you doing?

>I don't know.

To get where we are today, they first had to figure out how people could make money there. Money was important then. The first guy said, we'll count eyeballs. The second guy said, what's an eyeball worth? Nothing. Then, two other guys said, who needs eyeballs? Who would pay us money for eyeballs? Those two guys cornered the eyeball market.

They got everybody to sell them all the eyeballs they could find. You didn't get much unless you found a lot of eyeballs. But the two guys tinkered with it and got it adjusted so that everybody could make a living. Before that, you had to be funny, just to survive. But it didn't matter to the two guys if you were funny or not. They got paid either way. So, finally, they started paying for information by the bit. If she said hoo, and he said ha, and three other people tuned in, that was a transaction. She got paid. He got paid. Some people ate better than others, but everybody survived. Because, if you died, those two guys didn't get paid.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Going Worldside

Going worldside is a trip. It's unbelievable. Everybody sweats there. The world sweats. And nobody knows who you are: everybody has his own version of the system and you're in all of them, but none of them are you. It's incredible. It's easy to forget what it's like, being in an actual place and being anonymous. Stay netside long enough and you get a kind of bends when you go worldside, where the air is too rich in your lungs and a gentle breeze makes you think you could be losing your mind.