Oh, that Wild, Whimsical Web!

The Internet was built by a bunch of university snobs.

The World Wide Web — not the same thing as the Internet! — was built by a bunch of intellectual scientists.

The Information Superhighway was built by Al Gore. (Just ask him, he’ll tell you!)

But the soul of all digital information delivery systems was built by a bunch of long-haired Silicon Valley nerds.

Want proof? Just look at company names.

For decades, what was the name of the company that was the world leader in computer technology? IBM. It stands for International Business Machines. They made their mark with adding machines. And time clocks. Uh. Huh.

In the early 1980s, what was the name of the company that created the world leading operating system for personal computers? Micro. Soft. Microsoft. Get it? Micro-computer software. Had to think a long time about that one, didn’t you, Bill?

But what company emerged as one of the first Internet search engines, later to become a leading portal for information delivery? Yahoo! With an exclamation point! Literally!

And what company came up a few years later to become the leader in search and just about everything else digital? Google. Without an exclamation point — but with a really cool name. It’s a play on the word “googol”, which means a number with a hundred zeros — literally greater than the number of protons in the observable universe.

And it kinda looks like the word “giggle”, which amplifies its coolness.

The world of Internet branding is littered with little nuggets of triviality. The name “Amazon” originally stood for the world’s largest bookstore, named after the world’s largest river. Wikipedia was named after a bus in Hawaii, which was named after a Hawaiian word for “quick”. eBay was named after the consulting company of its founder. Apple was named after a fruit as an afterthought, and was allowed to keep that name only after they promised Apple Records that they would never, ever enter the business of selling music.

I could go on. Zappos. Twitter. Pinterest. All big names on the Internet. And just saying their name makes you want to smile.

Industrial giants of old tended to have industrial-sounding names: Kodak. Standard Oil. General Electric. United Technologies. Hrummppph!

It’s nice to see that digital companies of today recognize the importance of a good brand. But they also see that a whimsical brand name doesn’t cheapen the value of their stock. It only makes it more memorable. And more fun to say.

Think about that next time you giggle about Google.

My Kingdom for a C-Prompt

For the last few days, I have been reading about “Vista”, Microsoft’s new operating system that is due to be released the beginning of 2007 (or whenever). I’m especially intrigued by the minimum — that’s minimum — system requirements just to get this thing installed on a computer. Five hundred and twelve megabytes of random-access memory. That’s four times the memory that is on the 8-year old computer that I usually use at home.

Ah, my home computer. 128 meg of ram. 10 gig of hard drive space. A zip drive for backup. And Windows 98. State of the art when I purchased it. It’s as old as my refrigerator. Almost as old as my pickup truck. Only half the age of my house.

But in computer years, it’s ancient. As old as the hills on Grandma’s chest. Older than dirt. It’s so old, its serial number is negative. The last time I called Dell’s customer service, the guy on the phone just sorta chuckled when I told him my model number. I just hung up. He was no help.

So here I am with a moderately functional computer and an operating system that’s six versions behind. No upgrade path. No residual value. Scrap value of maybe a couple of bucks if you melt the silver out of the motherboard. But hey, it’s paid for.

While reading about Vista, I became more than painfully aware of the limitations of my computer. Last month, Microsoft officially stopped supporting my operating system. According to onestat.com, almost 87% of all personal computers run on Windows xp. 2.7% run on my operating system. I have never been in such an ignominious minority. For a middle-aged white guy, that hurts.

A long time ago, I was a C-prompt guy. The computer waited patiently for me to tell it what to do. And then it did it. One thing at a time. I didn’t have to point at anything or drag anything. It didn’t connect to the Internet behind my back and download viruses. It just did what I told it to do.

Sometimes I long for those days. Sometimes I just want a computer to ask me what I want it to do. Then I can type in a command and it will do it for me. Sigh. It’ll probably never happen again in my lifetime.

I’m saving up for a new computer. By the time I can afford one of those new-fangled giga-ram computers, Vista will be three of four versions behind. It’ll take twenty gig of ram to load the operating system, which will probably be code-named “Leroy” or something like that.

If I had a kingdom, I would give it up for a computer that had a C-prompt and an operating system that could run on a meg of extended memory with a 32-meg hard drive. Then I’d type on a black screen with green letters in a fixed font.

And life would be good.