WWW: The Web We Wove

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You just can’t tell about History.

I mean, things are changing so fast, it sometimes feels like the very past itself is not as solid as it used to be. At least that’s the take where I am. Or is that when I am? The terminology isn’t too precise. And here at AT&T (at least before it got broken up into a bunch of smaller, almost incoherent organizations), we engineers and scientists used to pride ourselves on lucid, accurate, precise, and correct terminology and language. However you say it though, one thing is clear to me: nothing is what it seems to be to all of you who work outside The Phone Company. History, least of all.

Let me try to make that a little clearer.

Have you ever had the feeling, during the last ten or fifteen years, that history just was not happening like we all thought it would? How strange that the world’s bad guys just sort of gave up and went away without a fight? How so many kinds of weird people and unusual ideas and outrageous political movements have sprung up, have even won elections? How even the historians can’t seem to agree on history any more, and how we argue about even our memories of recent events? I’ve got news for you: history hasn’t been what it should have been. It isn’t even staying the same.

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