The Bog's Dollocks

"I'm a web 0.9 person." I winced on the phone a couple of days back, as I found myself explaining my internet origins in the days of clockwork and digestive biscuit-powered computers to a young person for whom the internet has always been there, just a given, like beer and bad wallpaper.

I used to surf for pleasure, just get online, nervously blotting out the phone bill from my curious mind, and see what I could find. Anarchy, science, culture, arcane knowledge and the rich tapestry of human weirdness available for the first time came blinking through a 14.4 modem via in strangulated bursts of red data.

By 2am, bleary-eyed and with a hand promising early RSI from so... much... mouse... clicking... I'd end up at NASA, trying to find the cool pictures, or on some arty news group which ran on a Pentium 386 in someone's cupboard in Bristol.

Has anyone ever stopped to measure the effect this sudden global openness has had upon our once-compartmentalised cultures? I mean, aside from making it easier for perverts and terrorists to operate, giving lonely home-bound people a massive lease of life, and me a significant part of my income? The extent to which we have over the last 15 years or so truly and utterly changed our perspectives is a remarkable revolution which we seem to have already forgotten.

These days though, very rarely do I find that "must return" site, the dangerous time-suck that makes me miss appointments and lie guiltily about my reasons for being late, like a shameful addict. Stumble Upon is supposed to take me back to those heady days of frontier exploration, but it doesn't. It's just another guide to the sprawling mall which the internet has become, albeit a quasi human-constructed one. Directories ain't what they used to be. Del.icio.us is cool, if you can be bothered to use it. And although I write this blog with a rhythm that just won't stop, I've practically abandoned all but a handful of blogs and podcasts, in order to catch up on books, films, radio, and television.

Still, some internet things are still sparkling, wonderful and true, and made in Britain. Such as the Peevish Slang dictionary. At last, a decent online resource, telling it as it truly is.

Welcome, Peevish, to my internet life, and congratulations on a job well done. Internet friends from other lands now have a very cool place to understand the meaning of the words I use all too frequently, and with which I permutate, obfuscate, and navigate my torrid life, and I have a nice, easy to read website to study and enjoy, and possibly submit the occasional suggestion.