I've been calling this "mediajihad," i.e. media struggle. It's been fascinating to watch.

I've been on-line in one forum or another since August of 1989 (think cold fusion). Modem hiss... FidoNet... BBSes... and StarFlight. Nowadays I edit Wikipedia, run a couple of Tor relays and plaster myself all over Facebook. Who knows what the 2020's shall bring?

Have fun tracking it down, but I once came across an anthology of contingency speeches which were never given: _The Ungiven Speeches_ by Learie John Fraser. General Eisenhower's in case D-Day failed... President Nixon's in case Apollo 13 didn't make it back... Fascinating what-ifs!

I was at home when my mother told me that the shuttle had blown up. I immediately asked "On the launch pad or in flight?" When she said in the air, I knew they were all dead. A sad day.

Or Getty Images partnering with Flickr. A small slice of the market shall always pay for really high-end, professional work, it's just that the slush pile has grown so large and accessible that the lower end of that slice has effectively vanished. Verily all God's children got bandwidth now, and new business models shall come into being, and nothing is new under the sun.

Some might consider the Trekker option closer to fine:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencf0618/4719438855/

I've several palm-sized tattoos, all covered up. And mathemamatically, I'd go with phi.
     

Along those lines:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencf0618/4719438819/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencf0618/4722147757/

And the inevitable counter-example:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencf0618/4722147783/

Yogi Berra lives!

Stalkface (as I now call it) has become such an integral social platform that it really does have us by the 'nads. I'm middle-aged, and Stalkface has enabled a certain level of ambient social chatter for me which ranges from elementary school deaf kid cohorts to contemporary friends, acquaintances and correspondents. Then again, I've been on-line in one forum or another since 1989, circa the cold fusion debacle, so I figure that getting screwed by the panopticon became the default long ago.

I attended Greendell Elementary in Palo Alto, California. Same set-up, same era --my Dad tells me
that this was the pilot program for computers in education. Anyone know anything more? In any case,
those ASR-33 Teletypes were so loud, even we deaf kids could hear them! The terminals were connected
to Stanford University, but all we got out of them was spelling and arithmetic.

I remember being intensely annoyed that the terminals would instantly spit out WRONG ANSWER --TRY AGAIN,
not even allowing you the dignity of completing your mistake, but I had my revenge. One rainy day they
weren't connecting via the acoustic modem. Each terminal had a PRESS TO START button. Knowing full well
what I was doing, I slowly but surely pressed mine down into the plastic chassis and physically broke the
switch.

"But it said 'Press to start!'" I haven't played the innocent as well since.

Epilogue: I gave my nephews an obsolete IBM ThinkPad last Christmas, figuring that it would get the ball rolling
even if they had to get software from eBay. And indeed they were so intrigued by it that their parents invested
in a modern laptop. They're nine and five --and I can't imagine how their sensibilities shall evolve as they grow
up and the technology itself continues to accelerate towards the Singularity. O brave new world...!

Check out the WoW machinima --it's had resonance far beyond the gaming community.

http://digicha.com/?p=125

Suffice to say, I await a mechinima of David Lindsay's gnostic novel.