As I sit here in my (Internet Room) IR, I realize it was just a matter of time before they'd catch up with me. While I wait, I want to record some of the things that have brought me to this ignoble end. In case I don't get away, I want to leave this narrative of my career.

I was born in the early days of the Internet and the rapid growth time of the web. It started in the early 1990s, it was a wild frontier time. The net users in every country were confounded by this "monster" they had created. Businesses of all types joined the rush to this communications revolution and the media hyped it endlessly. Seeping through the negative media stories was a more powerful message.... it was a new instrument for commerce. At first very crude gray background sites were hard to find and the equipment primitive. Only a few favored curious techies ventured into this virtual wilderness.

In a very short time, the web grew to over 500,000 web sites and domain names were fought over. Small businesses and entrepreneurs had found an economical vehicle to display their goods and services to millions of prospective buyers. Major companies spend millions creating elaborate web advertising. Intranet began to dominate internal company networking of computers. Ways were found to link companies together to do business. Email became the choice of millions and soon more message were sent on the Internet than through the US Post Office. Small companies who had never before thought of attracting foreign customers, were suddenly very international and even put up web sites with several languages offered. The Internet was making it's own world.

Cybercopyrights were outside the realm of the existing rules for other types of media. Rules agreed to within a country did not apply. Treaties that had been negotiated between countries to regulate and protect copyrights, trademarks and patents, seemed not to work when you were in the Internet environment. Most rules and laws had been formulated by generations that never conceived of the need for electronic rules and regulations. The sheer complexity of this situation overwhelmed those charged with regulation. They quickly became bogged down in the morass of conflicting rules and changes that were occurring very rapidly.

Pornography and smut became one of the few ways to insure a profit in the capitalistic world of that era. While many Internet users fought to retain the wild west atmosphere, many also wanted to restrict various ways the Internet was being used. Many commercial users had no compunction against using Email in the same way they used the post office to send direct mail advertising. Adult web sites sprang up like weeds. The Internet community felt they could police the web themselves and like the frontier days, some decided to become "gun slingers" on the side of their perception of "right", while others with opposing points of view did the same thing. Eventually, as you may remember, the battles for control and dominance became pronounced.

Flamers and ISP's descended on the "Spammers". Those that made a business of sending commercial messages to email addresses in large doses or small were set upon and vilified and legally persecuted. Many responded by fighting back in kind. Injustice and unfairness and viciousness was rampant on both sides. New comers were often set upon for their lack of knowledge of "netiquette". Much of the resources of the net were wasted in these battles. Many of the Internet veterans tried to educate the "newbies" but, most did not. Great resentment was in evidence as commerce all over the world took over the web. Email bombs were created, software packages to delete large chunks of bulk mail became available, and as with bulk email, often fell into the hands of transgressors who used them against their creator.

Existing large computer services were forced to compete in a virtual world they had very recently dominated. Several of these giants could not compete and change to accommodate the new electronic world. Several service companies that had been very prominent for years disappeared. Some faded away quietly while others went out with a bang. Consolidations began to occur as may smaller localized Internet Service Providers (ISP) were bought or merged until their number had shrunk.

Finally, since nearly all were dependent on the telephone companies, there were acquisitions and mergers and divestitures, until most were owned or controlled by telecommunications giants. Even though the large telecommunications companies had joined the fray later, they had the capital, the resources and the infrastructure to dominate the industry. Like a sleeping giant, they finally awoke. An early development on the Internet woke them up. This was the ability of net users to make long distance phone calls at local phone rates.

Pornographers and pedophiles found an ideal vehicle for networking and for profit. The educational community of the world was rapidly adopting and expanding the Internet use by children and the two cultures collided. This brought government at all levels into the fray.

Governments all over the world abhor vacuums in their authority. With one hand, they embraced the Internet and provided the resources to make it grow. After all, it had been created out of a need by the US government to have a fool proof communications network in case of an atomic war or other holocaust. The Internet and its culture was little understood by the typical government representative and while most government departments and branches in the US had web sites, few of the legislatures of this government understood the "monster" they had allowed to be created. So, like many in power who do not understand a situation, they began to try to pass laws at all levels of government. In the US, various state legislative groups passed laws that were totally unenforceable and universally ignored. Many of these laws and regulations were so ill conceived that they contributed to the confusion.

For those of you who are old enough to remember, things began to sort themselves out. The Internet evolved and the world turned and order began to conquer chaos. A lot of the free spirit of the Internet is still in evidence when you think about it. But, a lot has changed. Shortly after the millennium, the United Nations spearheaded the move to create an Internet World Government. Although it was rough going in the beginning, agency structures were established and grew into their jobs. Inter Nic's replacement was not a private commercial organization. Various reforms by ad hoc committees were sorted out. Some were adopted and others abandoned.

Groups of prominent Internet pioneers helped form the Internet World Government (IWG). Country governments from all over the world agreed to let the IWG handle issues of cybercopyrights and other issues of this sort. Various departments and branches came into being. A Department of Justice established laws and regulations. Certain segments of the old Internet were split off and formed their own Internet. The Commercial Internet was the most popular and best funded. This specialized network has subnetworks and the subnetworks have nodes to accommodate different subscriber audiences. The pornography issue has been resolved because only subscribers can access this part of the Commercial Internet (CI).

Money transfers via the net and security problems are mostly behind us. Actual money and checks have gone the way of the dinosaur, everything is electronic. Even shopping malls as I knew them in the 90s have given way to electronic Shopping Systems. Between the use of Internet Smart Cards and Internet Rooms, it is hard to be anonymous. With the exception of a few Internet Outlaws, all users are carefully tracked. It was not my intention in the beginning to be an IO, it just happened. I fell in with a bad crowd of hackers.

There were some other careers paths I entertained when younger. The Creative Arts have their own Internet called CAI. They are heavily subsidized by the CI, but are not a subnet work of the Commercial Internet. They are part of the Special Internet which also housed museums, anthropology institutes, art galleries, cinema and old TV programs. Other logically grouped subjects have their own Internets and no crossover is permitted. For example the Education Internet (IE) is strictly for students and teachers. Advertisers of sex, cigarettes, liquor and drugs are not allowed access, nor can children access the CI where these reside. As a child I was strongly drawn to CAI, but, did not have talent in graphics. I think it was my spatial perception. I could not visualize 3d images as they moved and turned. It was easy to see what the back and inside looked like on an old style screen, but not as they floated in space around me.

Every citizen in every country is given an Internet Access Card (IAC) when they are born. It is issued along with the birth certificate. The IAC is a smart card that allows access to different Internets at different times as they grow. I managed to get a false one and was able to access all the different Internets. Even if I was no good at creative graphic art, I figured out early how to break into an Internet.

Another big change over our early days has been the way we access the Internet. As you may recall from your history books, the keyboard was the main input device and the computer monitor did the output. It was in those days, the voice command was introduced for controlling various application programs. Although crude, it was a very workable advance and explains why today we can tell our Internet Systems what to do and where to go. Clumsy helmets, color monitors and such devices were the fore runner of our Internet Rooms (IR) where I find myself waiting now. Science fiction of the 90's predicted the IR with some of the popular TV programs of the era. In one TV show, they were referred to as the "holodeck".

My time is almost up. I can sense the mind lock starting to take me. The VFS (Vigilante Flame Squad) has finally found my signal. The Internet police, commonly known as VFS, really do flame you now. I have to turn off the IR, stop the email broadcast into the CI and leave before they get a good lock, or my lucrative spamming days are over.

May 4, 2038

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