John December
What a trip it has been. I remember picking blueberries in the burnt-over forests of the Upper Peninsula in summer, with the brush crackling with wasps and flies, the sun dropping a cloak of heat onto your back, and the berries thudding onto an empty coffee can, never covering the shiny surface at the bottom of the can, so often did I eat the berries that tasted of heat and summer. Then it seems next, but it was a couple of decades later, I'm in a little cabin on a ship in winter, in Stockholm harbor. Out the porthole, across ice, the tower of City Hall rises high in the cold air. At 5 am, I leave on the Tunnelbana to an airplane, to the T in Boston, then a bus, then home. I've realized this about life: you essentially get paid only in moments like this.
I started using the Internet back in about 1990 when I was a graduate student in Computer Science. Using Unix workstations, we had access to Usenet newsfeeds, and I would read the groups as a time-wasting exercise. Worked well. I did finish my thesis and graduate, but I decided to continue studying the Internet.
I oriented my graduate study toward online communication and by the early 90's, I was looking at the Net and all the great things back in those ancient times: Gopher, LISTSERV, telnet, and others. Used to get stuff via FTP. Then there was this http protocol and this weird text-based browser. It was no Gopher!
But then something happened. I remembered where I was and what I was doing--I was at the Unix workstation at school, and I brought up a software program called Mosaic. My life hasn't been the same since. I had the opportunity to do some writing about the Internet (articles and books), some speaking opportunities in seven countries, and mostly work on developing my own Web site.
By the start of the 21st century, my Web site had grown so that it could produce revenue. In the past few years, I have been working as a Web publisher. I'm very grateful for the chance to work independently, study topics that interest me, interact with my site readers, and continue to learn about the online world.
As part of my work, I track information on a variety of topics. I started out with 
Computer-Mediated Communication Information Sources.
I went on to track also 
Internet Tools including
Audio,
Video,
Blogs,
Net Cafes,
and
Social Nets.
I worked on a magazine for several years,
Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine.
I also present information on
Unix and
HTML including a popular
Color Spot.
I enjoy learning about cities, and I cover
New York City,
Los Angeles,
Chicago,
Boston,
Seattle,
San Francisco,
Washington, DC,
Philadelphia,
Las Vegas,
Denver,
Miami,
Minneapolis-St Paul,
Madison, Wisconsin,
and where I live now,
Milwaukee.
I provide information about
Web Development as well as
Introductory use of the Internet.
I still try to keep up with areas of my previous study,
including
Mathematics,
Creative Writing,
and
Computer Science.
Technorati: Discussion about “Great blogs bring people together”
http://technorati.com/posts/ao9NO_uFsxGXDt4Xj0CQbq...
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