Dave: Remember me sitting in a winter jacket for hours programming that giant computer I got for free? Hundreds and hundreds of lines of code in BASIC? Do you know what I was programming?
Ty: No. I can't remember. Was it:
- The code to take over earth?
- A program to count backwards from a million?
- Greenscreen porn?
- Nope, or at least, can't remember.
Dave: I hadn't thought of it for a long time, but what I was working on was some kind of rudimentary Facebook. It was a system where people would log on with a user name, and be able to leave messages for each other, and chat with each other with different levels of security. And that was what it was really about, was the levels of security - a user would be given security status of something like 1-5, 5 being a super-user, and able to do anything, read anything, 1 with the smallest amount of freedom of interaction. Basically I was creating a system where I would be a god, and would be able to give others godlike status also. It's such an innate desire for us to do things like that. Having your own blog, moderating comments, it's the same sort of thing. It just feels right. I knew the entire time that this program would never be used, since you and I were the only one's on the system. Yet I still had the compulsion to create that world.
Ty: You are that genius but were in the wrong time/place. FF 20 years and boom! Here we are and you get not an iota of credit.
So what's the tweak then, for the future? FF another 20. How do we, no you, improve upon what we have been provided to date? Dave! Put that jacket back on and get back to that giant computer! <-- metaphor Maybe what is next is a way to drill down to more intimacy; micro rather than macro; quality rather than quantity. Instead of Facebook, maybe a way to stay closer to five people. No money in it, not a cent, just a thought. That's just crazy. What am I saying? We don't need no giant computers. Hell if I don't remember this now. I couldn't get my head around it at the time, all, "that's gooood Dave...I'm going to go and eat a chicken patty sandwich." But yeah, it's the security levels, or....access levels. The Ponzi of interwebs social networking.
Dave: Yesh, could be....Ty...I'm going to go and eat a Subway sandwich now.
I used to go on bulletin boards in high school with my 300 baud modem. Many of them had "elite rooms". Sad.
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