I send this message from a brick and mortar box, some twenty five feet above the ground. I am lit by a current of electricity flowing through finely coiled wire in a glass bulb filled with gases. I tap out this code on a plastic block, embedded with circuitry which is activated by spring-mounted plastic buttons. I see the message displayed as I compose it, on chemically coated glass which glows in tiny multicoloured dots where it is struck by a stream of electrons. The electrons in question are controlled ultimately by a microscopic machine constructed of billions of electrical switches, which responds to instructions stored in patterns of magnetic dots on spinning disks, and sometimes to the code I tap in at the keyboard.
Added @ 12:23 PM to Diary category on June 06, 2000