Dark Bilious Vapors

The trouble with the future is that it never arrives—or by the time it does, we fail to recognize it as such. The Internet is one such creature of the future that now fails to impress. Had you told me 15 years ago that by 2004 I could retrieve any one of 13 billion pages of free content—newspapers, all the great books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, catalogs, weather reports, political writings, hobby scribblings, diaries, pornography, owners manuals, learned exegeses, trivia, et al.—from an electric typewriter connected to a fancy phone line and a color television, I would have cried, "Amen!" But instead, I find myself sitting at my computer and grumbling because a few "facts" that I know to be true and need for this article can't be substantiated by a Google search or a Nexis prowl. The future has failed me!
--Jack Shafer [slate.msn.com]

Len on 05.06.04 @ 07:03 AM CST