07.17.2001.6557.41.46568.56684..45.4.46 - 17.21.58.

>>>>>[So I was perusing the internet today and found an article that I thought was just balls out amazing. It's by Michael Lewis. It's an excerpt from his new book, should be on the shelves real soon. Purchase it online? Something I think anyone who is reading this would enjoy. You too Mr. Dark.]<<<<<

>>>>>[Now this article/excerpt really hit me. In fact it sort of shook me awake in the face of the change that we're seeing on a daily basis. here's just a sample.]<<<<<

>>>>>[I have already written here about Jonathan Lebed, the 15-year-old boy in the New Jersey suburbs who used the Internet to transform himself into a stock market manipulator. Jonathan's story suggested that you couldn't really understand what was happening on the Internet unless you understood the conditions in the real world that led to what was happening on the Internet -- and you couldn't understand those unless you went there in person and looked around. Once you did that, you came to appreciate all sorts of new truths. For instance, the Internet was rock 'n' roll all over again. Not rock 'n' roll now, but rock 'n' roll in the 1950's and 1960's, when it actually terrified grown-ups. The Internet was enabling a great status upheaval and a subversion of all manner of social norms. And the people quickest to seize on its powers were the young.]<<<<<

>>>>>[So what do you think, what is this saying about our precious turn of the century internet immersed culture? If this proposition is true, how are the youth of TODAY going to change and manipulate the cyber-dream of the information super-web?]<<<<<

>>>>>[ How are those in their middle years going to cope with the snot-nosed internet punks of the coming years? Will we be regarded in the same way we regarded the hippies and metalheads or yore? I hate to think that I will one day be lumped in a technological group equivalent to the balding musician who earnestly supports Yanni? Will I be surfing websites in the same way our older cube-mates listen to foghat?! Full of 'it was better back in my day when' and 'Internet? I remember when all we had were dummy terminals and the BBS, you damn young-uns...']<<<<<

>>>>>[But the cold hard facts are that it is changing. Faster than anyone can keep up. The author goes on to muse about the puzzle of aldolescence, and how a teen has the magical ability to take things at face value. That they are able to accept things simply as they are, that nothing really suprises them, and this is because they have little to no frame of reference--they haven't built up a moral history to rely on to make decisions.]<<<<<

>>>>>[I sometimes long for this malleability. One of they many burdens of adulthood I guess. Responsibility, but beyond that a moralistic imperative and drive that you just can't shake. Now I don't mean moralistic in the 'you should not kill' variety, but more in the self-centric way of an individual through their history will come to understand certain things, rules to live by if you will. Wherein one person can walk by the salvation army santa at X-mas without tossing in some change, and another can't bear not to give alms to the poor. Got it?]<<<<<

>>>>>[So the internet is like rock-n-roll. Well at least I have a good, honest respect for The Replacements. Cause we all know, they were the only band that ever mattered...]<<<<<

>>>>>[ So anyway, this article can be reached HERE HERE HERE and you should all go out and read it.]<<<<<

>>>>>[Now, I found this lined off of Wired.com at lunch while perusing the daily sites. The link took me to I think the New York Times Magazine, and again, was written by Michael Lewis. Check it the fuck out.]<<<<<

>>>>>[And that's all from Gunhead today! More later, and probably inspired by this Lewis fella...]<<<<<

>>>>>[Rock on!]<<<<<