Welcome back to the past... ------------------------------ Welcome to my first phlog from within the gopher universe, in well, a very long time. I grew up on old mainframe systems, unix boxes -- I cut my teeth on them, if you will forgive the gopher analogy. This is perhaps an experiment. I still have a memorial connection to the on-line bulletin boards of old, first on the VM-CMS system at Queen's University in Kingston, and later dialup BBS's of the early on-line world. I remember reading William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ for the first time, and marvelling at the idea of "cyberspace" and all that it meant. I remember ordering a copy of the _Whole Earth Catalogue" from Loompanics, and later using its author, Harold Reingold's new book _Virtual Community_ in a series of guest lectures I was teaching in Communications, at Wilfrid Laurier University on virtual and embodied realities. I remember setting up a FidoNet BBS, and communicating in bulletin board style around the world and across the street. And here we are again... what's old is powerful again -- in its meaning, its import, and its promise. cpj 2018-11-14