I guess he was a "Guy Friday"*, if that even exists anymore.
Oh well. We shrugged it off as yet another eccentricity, typical of the weird atmosphere that surrounded us. He called out to us one evening, long after regular office hours, so we would gather around a computer screen in the now-absent creative directors' office.
"Guys, guys, check this out!" He signalled us over, then pointed at the screen he sat in front of. "This is the Internet. And it's free! You can chat with people online. I got a couple of girls on here right now that I'm talking to, at the same time." One of my friends said: "How do you know it's a girl on the other end? It could be some dude who's messin' with you." Excellent observation. And it looked like:
Huh. Neat. Not exactly the hip future we were hoping for: geeks fumbling awkwardly after women. How novel. It was the computer equivalent of one hand clapping. Needless, we were not dazzled. And so, I waited. It wasn't too much longer that web browsers and desktop publishing interfaces were introduced, warming up the digital environment to resemble actual human eyesight and thinking. Mac users were there from the start because we had to, eking out a living.
By the 90s, I had a home set-up, after tears and yelling, a bit of hair pulling and gnashed teeth, plus hours of 1-800 phone calls to tech support lines. Some refused assistance because I wasn't on a paid warranty program, and I wouldn't cough up a credit card number to whoever was on the other end of the line (and it was a land line). Hacking and piracy, cyber-crime, went hand-in-glove with advances back then, just like any other frontier town. The territory was The Wild West, unregulated and rarely monitored. With great freedom came some risk, but isn't that how the best situations always begin?
It was a nail-biting experience, setting up a home system, adding the Internet with dial-up capabilities. Each peripheral, like the printer, external disk reader (be it floppy, SyQuest cartridge, or Zip), and scanner, had different software, drivers, ports, wires, connections, and cables. One wrong move in the daisy chain, and the whole works didn't function properly, which amounted to hours of work for naught. We were truly on our own in this new world. So, we learned and adapted, to the point where modern companies still sometimes confuse our job roles with those of computer programmers or IT.
But set it up I did, as I sat there for hours watching time bars move at an excruciatingly slow rate of speed across the screen. I studied the Internet as a medium. Search engine. Hm. I typed in "midget porn". Links!! Yeah! Ohhhh. Sadly, the top one was the site of a little persons' Australian rugby team, but I was thrilled nonetheless. (Rubs hands together over keyboard). World Wide Web, indeed. Here. We. Go. Back at the office, we created badly Photoshopped gag images hastily, as fast as we could master new software, and played hours of networked computer games among our intrepid band of artists and designers.
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| http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/big-hoop-dreams-for-small-heroes-at-world-dwarf-games/2009/07/23/1247942008504.html |
By the time me and my then-fiancé had a couple over for dinner at the apartment, I had the works at home up and running. Après-dinner, I showed the group what my new-found knowledge had provided us with, and that was....stupid videos! We chatted with drinks in hand, while I periodically checked the screen for status. Finally, after about 25 minutes or so, it was ready to run. And this is what I showed them, successfully producing the sought-after reaction: wildly gut-busting fits of laughter. Pinky now lives forever in cyberspace, perhaps as the first-ever web video that went instantly viral. Long may he reign.
Are you ready for Friday?
