Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
David Walden, Computer Scientist at Dawn of Internet, Dies at 79
I worked for IBM for over a decade after retiring from the military and became aware of David Walden’s name while I was there. I’d heard of the work of the I.M.P. before that while reading about ARPANET. People like Walden contributed to this thing called the net and develop it to the point where we have the connectivity of today. I take the net for granted, complaining about it when it’s slow or won’t load, along with the work that Walden did, but it’s pretty amazing when you regard its technology.
RIP, David Walden
I was on location somewhere. Huge friggin’ building. Mixed used. Offices, classrooms, and dorms. Not sure of my purpose there. Clearly a visitor as others introduced me. Looked me over. Showed me the ups and downs. Overall, the raisons d’être seemed about learning, teaching, and solving problems related to electronic communications and computer networks. We would form impromptu erratic groups that changed composition. All were young. Very smart. Male and female of multiple races and ethnicities were present. After forming in halls or lobbies, we’d be told something like, “So and so wants us in the blah blah blah,” and off we’d scurry. Never caught names. None of the faces were familiar. They were distinctly nebbish and nerdish, though. A vibe. The machines absorbed their intention. They made silly jokes.
They wanted to befriend me but I was dubious about being there. I didn’t select going there. Wasn’t certain of what was going on. But did learn that I would only be there a short time. A few days. This was a catalyst for them all to want to spend more time with me and be my friend. All kept trying to grab me so they could talk to me, pulling me close, pulling me away from others, following me as a herd, swamping me as I walked the halls and stairs. I was flattered and overwhelmed.
In the evenings, we could go to a club. Have beers. Well, that appealed to me. That immediately appealed to my new cohort. They were all for it. Going then involved an elaborate process of acquiring passes to leave and enter the right buildings and halls, and possessing the correct identification and means to buy beers. Totally bewildering to me on the first night. My new friends took me through it.
By the second day, I was more familiar, comfortable, and assertive. I was finding where I wanted to go. What I wanted to do. Then, beer again in the evening. My friends were less sure. Beer? Again? But we did that last night. Another group, who’d missed out on the previous evening, heard and wanted to go, so everyone went. Huge crowd.
Third time I spent more time in the classrooms. I was introduced to computer networks. They were having problems. We begin changing out components. The teacher led this process. I thought it haphazard. Shouldn’t we be tracking what we did and the results? It became more chaotic. Noisier. The volume deafened me. I focused on what was going on with fixing the computer networks. Can’t articulate in our real existence what was going on. Only that a fix was needed. We were removing and installing silver modules about the size of ancient removable hard drives. After doing a number of them, I discerned a pattern and began suggesting changes.
That’s where the dream ended.
Big, building. Warehouse or hanger. Don’t know. Not specified. Lot of other folks. Most are young or middle-aged. I’m young, late twenties. I’m working on a computer. Requires me to press F3 to enter data. I’m doing it, happily. Others are gathering. Most are strangers who introduce themselves to me. Many attractive young women. They take an interest in me.
Something is spilled on my shirt. No problem, I’ll change it. I take that one off to go find another one. A middle-aged woman interrupts me. She’s talking about mentoring me. I’m pleased. Two young women, crushing on me, come and sit by me. They’re very flirtatious. I enjoy the attention. Then, something subtly changes. They suddenly withdraw a little. I don’t know why.
A man my age comes along. He takes me aside. “Dude, you have a large blemish on your back.”
“I do?” I reach back, trying to feel it, twist around, stupidly attempting to see it. “Where is it? What is it?”
“I can show you. Come on.”
We walk. He’s talking as we go, trying to explain what the blemish is and where. I’m thinking, inflamed pimple or black head. He’s telling me, no, it’s not quite like that. Than what is it?
Others intercept us. He’s taken away for a moment but says he’ll be right back. Meanwhile, the mentor woman comes up. “You have a blemish on your back,” she says. “You need to put a shirt on and cover that up. It’s a distraction.”
Okay, but I want to know more about the blemish. “I can show you,” she answers.
We go off together to look. But then we’re separated. I turn around and she’s not there.
I decide that I need to pee. I head for the bathroom. It’s a cluttered place with a guard at the door. A friend is behind me. He tells me that I have a blemish on my back. I should put a shirt on. I answer, yes, I know. Head in to pee.
The ‘bathroom’ doesn’t resemble anything like a bathroom. Completely cluttered with junk. Looking around, I ask, “Where is the toilet?” I really need to pee by now. Finding a drain, I piss into it. Screw it. Like it’ll make a difference in that place.
I leave to go back to entering data. Two more friends approach and mention the blemish on my back, making it a total of five who mentioned it. The mentoring woman gathers us. As everyone goes to her, I slip off and find an oversized black tee-shirt. It’s been in my wardrobe but I’ve worn it. It a souvenir from somewhere, with writing on the front.
The mentoring woman tells the gathering to go to another area. I help lead the way because I understand where she indicated. We’re directed to a corner. I recognize it as the ‘bathroom’ location. That confuses me, but yes, the same guard is within, validating our identity and letting us pass. I’m surprised as anything. We’re going into the bathroom?
But, yes. In the bathroom is a tube with a ladder. We climb it and find ourselves in a dining hall of picnic tables. I find a table and sit. Another young woman comes over and asks if she can sit with me. The other two young woman witness this. They look jealous as the newcomer sits with me. She’s very touchy, patting my hand, my shoulder, letting her hand linger on me. Another woman joins me on my other side and starts flirting with me. I’m amused to be the center of so much attention, and a little uncomfortable.
The dream ends.
I’m at a work station. One those stands with a big tan CRT monitor on top, tower PC, keyboard on sliding tray. Something from the 1990s. Whole thing is just wide enough for the monitor. I’m one of many at such computer work stations. Large room. Wide and tall. I’m in the last row, on the end. Fourth one in line. This gives me space to my right. It’s open there and behind me.
Everyone is doing through thing. It’s a hubbub of clicking, clacking, talking, laughing. I’m doing my thing, reviewing files for a dead friend. The computer files on the screen on red. They fill the screen. When I print things out, the paper and folders are red. I suppose, when I’m wondering about the red while I’m dreaming, that the red is supposed to be symbolic of something. I don’t get it. Urgency? Warning? Don’t know. I’m also wondering why I’m going through folders about a dead guy. He’d been a friend but he died a while ago. My rational side intrudes: it’s your birthday. You’re sixty-five. Dead guy was a year older than you. Never lived to be sixty-five. Collect the dots.
Aha, dots probably collected. My wife is pestering me for specific information. This annoys me. She flits in to demand I look at something, sure that it’s important. I already looked and moved on while she wasn’t there. But she keeps coming back, asking to see specific files that I already read and closed.
Many others are behind me. Two women and a man are among them. The women are attractive. I gather that they’re foreigners. Maybe British and Scottish. They’re friends. I think one is with the guy. He seems American. He comes and goes. I keep catching snatches of the women’s conversation. They’re speaking of going someplace, doing something. I’m familiar with the areas and offer some unrequested advice, which they shun.
“Keep yourself to yourself,” I tell myself, sorting files on the computer. I’m testy with my wife as she comes and asks for information on a specific date and event. Without responding to her verbally, I search for the appropriate document, drilling down through information. She doesn’t realize what I’m doing and hectors me. I snap back with an explanation. She then goes away.
Meanwhile, the British and Scottish women have become friendlier. As if they sensed they rebuffed me and now want my friendship — or something — they step closer. I’m aware that they’re surreptitiously attempting to see what I’m doing. They make a subtle show of patting me on my shoulder, touching my arm.
It all confused and wearied me. I move off the dead man’s files. Why should I be involved with them? I find myself instead working on the files for another who worked for me. Investigating this person makes no more sense than checking the dead man’s files.
I understand it all when I awaken. The sense of dissatisfaction, frustration. The searching in myself for answers about directions and desires.
The blinds needed to be removed.
This was a requirement to paint around the frames. Somehow in the madness of life, I’ve decided that I need to paint the living and dining rooms. Together, they are, ‘The Great Room’.
Point of order: my wife hectored me into doing it. “These rooms are too dark. We need a lighter color.”
Me: “Huh-huh, you’re right.”
“When can you do it?”
“Wait, what?”
Life sometimes needs a rewind function.
Into the garage! To the tools! My tools are not greatly organized. Shelves hold several power tools and their requirements, along with a large toolbox. It’s augmented by a small thing with a work surface and four drawers. One drawer has lost its front. (I’m going to fix it sometime.) The top drawers are well organized with screws, anchors, glues, nails, sandpiper. The bottom two drawers are stuffed full of whatever I can get in there. I avoid opening them, except to retrieve tape and edger/trimmer string. My tape variety is impressive.
The screws holding the mounting brackets have a Philips-head X on it. They would not budge despite my grunting. “Get a screwdriver with more torque,” I muttered to myself. I already had the biggest. I would use the drill on it, but there’s not enough clearance. Bummer.
Sighing in frustration, I hit the ratchet wrenches. For some reason, I’ve acquired three complete sets. No, there’s more. At least two sets are metric. I bought them because I lived in Germany and Japan. Metric was used there, and I owned foreign cars – BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Toyopet. Plus, at least one set was priced at a dollar at a garage sale. Who can resist tools at a garage sale? They’re like books. You gotta look and see what might fill that imaginary hole in your library or toolbox.
The sockets are semi-disorganized. Most are in their proper places but the smallest sockets always go strolling. I go through them, looking for the 1/4 inch, along with the proper adapter to go from big to small. With all those socket kits, I have a multitude of options for changing spark plugs. Every manufacturer had a different size of socket required. Some had several. I also have a number of tools for setting the gaps on plugs and rotors, and wires for cleaning them.
Which reminded me of computers. Back in the office closet lives a set of shelves. On it resides office requirements like Wite-out, file folders, label maker, pens for the next century (if they don’t dry up), paper for the printer, ink for the same, assorted docks for laptops I no longer use, another printer I no longer use, cables for laptops and printers… You get it, right?
Disk drives also live on these shelves. Floppy 5.25 inch. Hard floppy 3.5 inch. Zip drives. CDs. All are ready to be formatted and written. I have not formatted anything in over a decade, maybe longer. I used to format things several times a week, back in, um, the last century. Strange that something that once was so common is now rare.
Not really. We were riding horses and trolleys more back in the last century, too. I only rode horses a few times for entertainment. Never mounted one to go to the store, or to visit the neighbors.
I don’t change my car’s oil any longer, either, although I have the wrenches for that, too, and the big wrench to remove an oil pan nut. I have baskets of computer and electronic gear. Ribbon wires, chipsets, an old power supply, old fan, along with a huge variety of RCA cords and adapters. There’s an extra monitor, too, and a VHS head cleaner for the VHS deck that I no longer use. I also own bearing grease, quart jugs of motor oil, and car cleaning supplies, like polishes and waxes.
Sometime, someone needs to go in there and clean all this stuff out. Not me, not today.
Time for me to paint.
Picked up some library books the other say. The library set up is working for this lockdown era: go online, put a book on hold on my account. They send an email when it’s ready. I have a window before it’ll be put back on the shelf, giving me time to plan when I’ll go down there to pick it up.
I go several times a month. There’s a table set up outside, under a canopy, Saturday through Thursday, noon to four. Tape is used as markers to indicate the traffic flow and safe distances. Patrons line up six feet apart. The librarian comes out. We’re all masked. You give your name; the librarian goes inside and return with your books. Your account number is verified verbally via the last three numbers. They give you your books and you go on your way.
As part of the process, a slip of paper with the book’s title and its return date is printed. On that little slip are also two little financial gems. One states how much money you’ve saved yourself by borrowing from the library. The other tells how much you’ve saved this year.
The first is $26 on my slip of paper today. That was for two books. Both are hardcovers. Neither were published this year. I suspect I could get them for less than twenty-six dollars used.
The second number is $660. That’s how much I saved this year, they said.
Well, I don’t know about that. I pay a little in taxes each year for this. It was a bond issue for the county library system, and it’s part of my annual property taxes. I don’t think they take those taxes into account when they tell me how much I’ve saved.
But I like the system. I’m a writer. I’d like people to buy and read my books. It’s great that the library system pays books to fulfill that for writers. I hope my books end up in the library some day. It’s also an excellentway to save on trees, innit? Buy a book and let multitudes read it.
All that led to ebooks. These books were available to be borrowed as ebooks. ebooks do even more to save trees, although we then get into the sticky situation of electronic waste.
I don’t do much ebooking; I like the personal heft of the thick books in hand as I carry them around and read in various postures. I know I’m silly and sentimental that way. I could use ebooks and save more trees. Yet, I resist.
I blame blue light for some of that resistance. I watch television (so cut down, you reply) while I’m running in place (oh, you answer, that’s a little different) or using the Stairmaster as part of my exercise. I’m not good at reading while walking (though I’m trying). I also spend a lot of time on the ‘puter reading news (so cut down, you suggest) (I probably should, I answer, as not much of the damn news is good for my spirit), writing, and editing. I don’t want to add the strain of reading ebooks to the strain I already thrust on my eyes.
Nothing is as clear cut as it first appears any longer, whether it’s environmental impact, saving money, or selling books. Our lives are choices, decisions, and compromises. I could, instead of running in place or exercising while watching television just curl up with a book. I could, instead of using a hefty volume, make it an ebook and reduce other strain on my eyes. Or I can go to audio books —
Yeah, don’t even go there. I am a fan of audio books; I’ve used them when driving long distances, and I’ve used them while exercising. I’ve found, though, I prefer the inner voice that I create when I’m reading something.
So, I’ve thought about these things. I recognize some of my habits are comfort ruts. Comfort ruts can be pretty useful in periods of stress, such as, say, a global pandemic. Then again, it may be that I’m just too lazy to change, modifying that ‘too lazy’ to ‘too old and set’.
This is just one facet of existence. These same sort of exercises go on with other things as we live, from medicines to using plastics to cars to public transportation to fossil fuels to recycling to GMOs to organic food to nutrition to healthcare to eating healthy to money to politics to welfare to taxes to social security to war to equality to fashion to music to film to being healthy to relaxing to having fun to —
Well, that point is hammered in. Life is a busy process of constantly re-balancing all these choices. I wonder what’ll it be like in another hundred years.
Strike that: let’s just see what it’s like next year.
My wife owns an Apple. She owns several; only one currently functions. She loves her Macs, except for three things.
But she’s loyal to the brand. She always buys Apples.
Of course, she is a stockholder.
It began like I was in one of my previous professions. At work, I received a phone call. A customer was having problems with his computer security. Well, those products ere being discontinued and his license keys had expired. Nonetheless, I cut new keys for him, directed him to a site to download them, and walked him through reinstallation. This is a process that would’ve taken some time but in dreamland, it was just a few minutes. Also, my dream office was much nicer and impressive than my real digs. It all seemed so sharp, it could’ve been real time.
The CEO came by. We chatted, and then drifted in opposite directions to new meetings. In my meeting, we were preparing to paint. Friends entered with the tablets. We stretched them out into large electronic canvases Then we painted on the screens. The tablets absorbed it, becoming a malleable medium. My painting was a large portrait of a blond woman in a yellow dress juggling tangerines.
Chinese food was brought in. We stopped to eat and talk about our work. A nearby young woman had been complaining about her finger. I told her to show me. She stuck out a blackened pinky.
“Your blood isn’t flowing,” I said. “Get me a needle and bowl.”
Holding onto her finger, I pricked her and squeezed her finger. Thick, black drops that behaved like mercury fell into the bowl. After doing that for about twenty seconds, her finger was normal.
End dream.
Michael Seidel, writer 