NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Via Google, Tomorrow is Yesterday, or Yesterday is Tomorrow, or ...
Via Google, Tomorrow is Yesterday, or Yesterday is Tomorrow, or ... http://j.mp/hEMKGG (This message in Google Buzz) - - - Greetings. Here's a little reminder of what happens when you've been online long enough, and of the bizarre sort of "immortality" that Google enables. This morning I did a Google Search for a Quite Obscure Topic related to, uh, "multidimensional physics" (more or less). I wouldn't have been surprised to find nothing, but I did find -- at the very top of the search results -- a single hit that (judging from the snippet) looked highly relevant. None of the other results looked promising in this case. I clicked through and started to read. Yeah, good stuff, except, hmm, something looked awfully familiar ... DAMN. It's my *own* posting. From almost exactly 30 years ago in an SF-L (Science Fiction Lovers) mailing list digest - 13 May 1981 from Lauren@UCLA-SECURITY (no domains back then, of course). SF-L was (by the way) the *very first* ARPANET (and thus Internet) Digest -- created originally as a "temporary expedient" due to what were perceived to be "high" email volumes at the time. http://j.mp/frNYIU (SF-L Digest Vol 3 Issue 125 / Google) I've run into versions of this phenomenon before, but never over such a long time span on a purely serendipitous basis. On one hand, I feel like one of those characters in a sci-fi plot who comes face to face with an earlier version of themselves through a time travel misadventure. Pretty cool. On the other hand, the realization that apparently in the three decades since I wrote those words, nobody else has written anything relevant on the topic (at least that was indexed) is a bit depressing. The Google Time Machine. Welcome to the 21st century (and the 20th century!), indeed. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com