And the rest of that epic....

In a moment of inspiration (OK,I confess - it was extreme boredom) I started clicking the Next Blog button that I noticed up there on the right. I've clicked almost of all of those buttons at various times. What can I say - put a button there, someone's going to push it. That the someone was me should surprise nobody. So I pushed it. And then I pushed it again; and again. And I found that there are some interesting - and potentially scary things out there, and that they can come in amusing sequences.

One thing I did notice, however, was just how many blogs there are that are dvoted to documenting the life and times of people who cannot - or might not even want to - document their own. The blogoshpere is full of proud parents. Which set me thinking (since i wasn't thinking of work, I had to have something to fill the space...CAD drawings make an interesting backdrop to websites, but they don't distract you nearly as much as they should...) Somewhere out there, in 20 years or so, there are going to be a whole lot of kids having 21st birthday parties and, instead of the traditional photo board,they'll be getting a whole other type of memory celebration. So howwould my life have looked on a blog, way back in 1980? Probably not nearly as interesting as it does from here, to tell the truth - although it would have had a killer soundtrack and some dance moves that would have everybody out on the floor. That everyone would be rolling around on the floor laughing at the same moves would be beside the point.

So how would it feel to have a permanent record of growing up, all your most embarassing stories where anyone could get at them? And that photo of you and your brother/sister in the bath together that you thought you could bury forver getting out into the world? No thanks. One of the things I loved about my own 21st birthday was that there was nobody there with any embarassing stories (OK, tehy had the stories, but most of them had something to be ashamed of within thier own closet that I could drag out for a square up). I managed to dodge the speeches, the awkward clash of family and friends. And yet...Somehow, my own 21st wasn't nearly as good as some of the others I went to. In fact, I enjoyed two parties of three or four others far better than I enjoyed my own. And that was knowing in advance that there weren't too many skeletons coming out to haunt me.

So maybe all those parties will be better than my own was. Or maybe, just maybe, there'll be a whole generation of kids scarred by the knowledge that, somewhere in cyberspace, there's a record floating around of all the times they called their teacher "Mum" by mistake, of every step, every word, every deed. And that, if people are willing to sift through the endless political rants - and there were plenty of them, too - to find the site, their life is laid out for all to see. Or maybe they'll just see it for what it seems to me - an expression of parents' wonder at the little person suddenly in their lives. That the expression is quite often sickly sweet will only affect the other people who happen to stumble across it. Who am I kidding? How many kids would think that way????

Think about what this is doing to poor defenceless people! Their life online! Forever! So I take a moment and be grateful that I grew up before the digital age. Back in the 80s, when Pacman was considered cool, and computer screens were all green text with a black/brown background.