Internet

I heard that Prince doesn't want to distribute his music on the internet because the internet is just a fad. Everyone scoffed at this, because the internet is exciting magic that lets you learn anything and contact anyone and buy anything from anywhere and also it is mostly free. But suppose it is indeed a fad, and my cohort's kids think nothing could be duller than fingertyping and eyescanning an internet page? I already know everything, they could say, and what I don't know I am happy to learn by slow and careful observation and tracking. I already have more than enough belongings to take care of, they could say, and by the way do you need anything? I suppose in my generation each family and school district acquired internet across a range of years, but I remember well when I had a computer cut off from everyone else's, and liked it. It had a program under the start menu that let me practice using a mouse pointer by clicking on one of five bright colored, numbered polygons. At nine years old I could barely type* but the idea of anyone unable to use a mouse, and yet able to learn to use a mouse, was absurd to me. Incidentally, I was fairly obsessed with whether each person I met could type, and how fast, and how they learned, and how long it took, until I learned properly, through practice, at about 12.

*I knew where the keys were, by a mnemonic that went: qwehrtieopp and azduhfuhguhhuhjaykayel and mom,mom,caitlanvandewalle,dad,nick,matthew/mark,period, but for the life of me I couldn't route my fingers to their destinations in a timely manner.