Spring?
March 13, 2003
In the Spring of 1990 I was in London, working for the British Computing Society as the executive editor of the magazine What's On In Computing. It was primarily an events listing quarterly but in the absence of strong management my partner-in-crime designer, Nicholas Redeyoff, and I decided our issue, the seventh, needed a redesign; some sprucing up of the look and some adding of a few more features. Soon after publication we both quit in the midst of administrative turmoil resulting from a move out of London to the boring town of Swindon. As far as I know the seventh issue was the last. (0000AQ)
I was inspired, tonight, to fish out one of my few copies of issue number seven. It's folded to A4, so somehow sleeker in its slenderness than other magazines around the house. The cover is a full page photo of a boat on the Thames. Why? We never really say. Turns out it is the "versatile training centre" from the page 5 news story. (0000AR)
On page 3 is what I was looking for: my letter from the editor, introducing our changes in the strained and earnest voice of me at 20. It was Spring then, and we were making changes, and I thought it was important, or at least something should be. I called the editorial "Writes of Spring": (0000AT)
Spring has always been a time of rebirth. A time when old developments are enhanced and new developments are unveiled, unsure in their infancy, but hoping for a brilliant summer…[zealous explaining of new features in the magazine and the forthcoming "high season for events"]…It has been said many time in the past few months, and maybe it is becoming mildly trite; but it is important not to forget that we have entered a new decade…A new decade that is not only the last decade of the century, but also a millennium. This doesn't happen very often. It is the perfect opportunity to let ourselves be forced into thinking about the world we live on and the things we do on it. Sounds heavy. It is and has very little to do with exhibitions and courses. (0000AU)
Remember your motives and don't get carried away. (0000AV)
I apologise for the title. (0000AW)
The Berlin wall had fallen right around the time I was hired for this job. Watching the BBC throughout the fall and winter months had been quite the experience. I, someone who had never taken to the paper before, was buying the Guardian or the Independent every day before getting on the train. I have a copy of the first Independent on Sunday stored away in a box. It has one of the best front page photos I've ever seen. (0000AX)
Even in the midst of Thatcher and the poll tax, there was a feeling of hope and connection, and the mundane world of computing events would not, could not, contain it. (0000AY)
I made several other odd decisions. One: the only two page feature has the following title "Hypertext may provide the CBT of the future". It's essentially a marketing whitepaper for a Hypercard application that we got permission to reprint (of course we got permission, it's an advertisement!). The paper arrived on my desk and I thought, "huh, this is cool" and stuck it in the print this pile. I made it into the closest thing we had to a centerfold. (0000AZ)
Thirteen years later it is once again Spring and I find myself thinking about the world we live on and the things we do on it. I wonder about my motives and how I got here. (0000B0)
My last remaining grandparent passed away on Monday. Gladden was my stepdad's mother. She died in relative peace, according to her wishes and at her home in Madras, Oregon. I barely knew her; as seems so often the case circumstances were never right for us to get to know one another and now there are the consequences. (0000B1)
Since Monday the weather has been improving. It's pleasant to think that Grandma's passing is part of the natural order of things and in some way she's responsible for the flowers showing up in the yard (0000B2)
and me out in sandals with the cat. (0000B4)
Grandma was the last of eight grandparents. My mom's mother died while I was in high school. Sometime soon after that her father died. After my first unpleasant year of college my mom and stepdad moved to England to occupy the family home: a thatched cottage in a very small village. I went to join them after my second unpleasant year of college. (0000B6)
The following Spring I published the magazine. (0000B7)
That same Spring my son was conceived. Today we sent hypertextual links of blogs back and forth with IM. This is, in very many ways, a miracle. (0000B8)
In a few weeks I'll be heading out to California to go to a party announcing BlueOxen Associates. BOA is about a lot of things but one thing that stands out is our interest in deeply-interconnected information resources that provide granular addressability. Hypertext, in other words. (0000B9)
I am relieved that Spring is here, and the flowers are blooming and I am talking with my son and I am going to parties for as I look around at the world (using a lot of hypertext) I wonder if we are preparing to waste the perfect opportunity we started in the Spring of 1990. (0000BA)
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