Off work, for the first time in a while. My tummy's not very well. I have been feeling sick on and off since last week. Normally at about 11am. But today I felt sick when I woke up. And my tummy's not well. Ah, nice. Weird that you can blog about such things.

Who am I talking to, anyway? The random spammers (blog spamming, whatever next?) who are the only ones that ever leave comments? My internet friends who have (mostly) all grown up and have lives? Well, I have a life too. I don't spend time on the internet much any more.

Feeling a bit retrospective.

I just finished reading Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. It's a very good book, and covers a lot more than just being a story about a bunch of geeks. It made me cry at the end, though maybe being ill's making me more emotional. I don't know. Anyway, the book made me remember what the internet used to be like. What it used to be like to be obsessed with computers, before everyone had one and started to insist they knew what they were doing.

Do you remember the days when the internet was full of geeks? There were a lot of students online, because universities had the internet, and most people at home didn't. University was my first experience of the net. And then we got our home PC set up with dial-up and a 56k modem. I mean, what could you do at that speed? Turns out a lot more than you can these days.

The internet's all about downloading now, or so it seems. People don't set up odd personal websites any more. WYSIWYG html editors are no longer the important thing - it's all about blogging, the easy way of making your own website. Or online communication, whether it's MSN or Skype. The internet is no longer the strange beast it once was - it's commercial. It's things from the real world in a more convenient package. If you want to make cheaper phone calls, or be a journalist, buy your groceries, organise your finances, or download music, you can do it all online.

Maybe some people think that's all the internet was ever about, but it used to be creative. It used to be about setting up your own community, finding a bunch of friends, doing things that most people would find really boring. Setting up websites that you put all your time and effort into, even if they were about something only 5 other people in the world would care about. But those 5 people would REALLY care. It used to be GEEKY.

I mean, look at MUD's and MOO's. And look at WoW. Yes, online gaming these days is fun, but online gaming used to be CREATIVE. It was text, you had to use your imagination... those worlds were constantly being built by people who cared about them. And for people like me who just turned up in them and roleplayed, well, you had to type proper English. All those kids who play WoW (and from the discussions I've raised in general chat, most of them ARE kids) type in garbled txt language. I hate it. It never used to be that way. Maybe there weren't so many kids, because it was harder to get into, because kids didn't have access to the internet. I don't know. Maybe kids just never used to talk the way they do now. (Constant insults about everyone in the world being n00bs are starting to get to me.)

And do you think people talk less on e-mail forums these days because they're no longer looking for online friends? All their real life friends have MSN, so they can just talk to them. They don't need to go out there and look for geeks like them. They have non-geek friends.

Come to think of it, how much do you even e-mail now? There was all that talk of how people wouldn't write letters because of e-mail, but how much do YOU e-mail now you have MSN?

So maybe I'm not online less because I went and found a life. Maybe I'm online less because the internet's just not what it used to be.