A Snapshot From Simpler Times

A long time ago, in a world of rotary phones, floppy disks, acoustic modems, and 16 bit 4 Kilobyte RAM computing systems... a micro universe known only to the relative few existed that would ultimately shape every being on this planet to the digital lifestyle taken for granted today.

The original social media communication platform, the DDIal, was a virtual hot spot for a niche of youth to meet online and socialize across localized distances through a digital party-line, forging the foundation for nearly every abbreviated term used today from BRB to LOL and unwittingly inventing a plethora of text emojis now "graphisized" in the modern iWorld.

It was an exhilarating time of profound possibilities within a finite system of perfect organization; simple and defined, complex and never ending, a closed network devoid of population, a small community in an endless expanse, far reaching, unknown, unseen, and waiting patiently only for you.

And there we were... during the prime of our teen+ years living an experience indescribable with words yet articulated with so many inflections via slow scrolling backlogs, callback delays and endorphin inducing slash p's.

We gabbed, we vented, we laughed, we shouted, and many times met in the landscape of reality: all walks of life invited, all opinions accepted, all perceptions tolerated, and all of us bonded friends for life.

It was the 80's through the mid 90's, pre-internet, pre-population, beneath the covers of parental comprehension, a covenant and sanctuary for the next generation understood only by us.

In my first years of college landing in a foreign city miles from home and equipped most importantly with my "Eighty Two-Eighty-Six" and "Twelve Hundred Baud Modem", i found myself instantly surrounded by a support network and group of friends seemingly displaced only by an etherical realm of time and space. As though we had all known each other since the beginning of the universe's inception, I was adopted into their culture of kinship only imagined through the eyes of a fictional utopia.

I made friends otherwise not possible, girlfriends otherwise not findable, and life events not likely probable.

It was a Tao in history that defined us, and even though we pioneered the social horizon we navigate today, the world got too big too fast swallowing it up to create bigger, better, faster, and never to be realized save the select few.

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