Working on the combined CSS/HTML/JavaScript/BASH, as I come up with a minimal build system that can be hosted on a minimal GNU/Linux OS via Deno, reminds me of a story. In ’94 I was introduced to a couple that wanted to talk urgently to somebody technical. The friend that introduced me ran a local computer magazine that I had written a couple of articles for. The couple was a man and his wife (or lover), but he was much more animated. She was somewhat grim, and mostly silent during his talk with me. We met at one of the new pubs that was going up in downtown, those trendy places that would overrun many downtown cores, which I also enjoy. I don’t remember the name. He had a notebook filled with notes, different Internet addresses (it was capital I back then… I don’t want to dead case the internet). He told me that the Internet was so powerful that I needed to get connected and download software before it was made illegal. He showed me where to get Mosaic, which I used for several years afterwards. I left with some of his sense of urgency rubbed off on me, and a sheet of paper with notes and links. I remember using Mosaic to find Netscape for awhile. I’m not sure why I needed the two-step. Perhaps there was no FTP site for Netscape? Maybe I only had my note he gave me on a piece of paper? I have to say, looking back, that the power of the internet was hijacked, taken away from most people. Most don’t use it in the powerful way it could have been used. For awhile it seemed like we would. People had websites, wrote HTML, etc. We faded, though. Our attention drifted to our feeds, both in our personal life but in our agile sprints. Hmmmm… hijacked implies some dark force, but, no, we fell under the crush of attention and complication as we built our way to collapse. But all of that is one possible universe. It isn’t over yet. The thing I am most fascinated about is the persistence of ideas, persistence beyond any individual person. True, that is culture. That is how we built civilization, right? I just think that the internet and compute and storage, the plateau we reached, has opportunity for persistence of ideas and learning that break out of the black iron prison (BIP ©️ Philip K. Dick). That is where my approximation of hope plays.