Do you ever find yourself wondering what it would have been like to live through the dotcom craze, circa 1996? More specifically, a New York based publishing-cum-media company with grandiose aspirations? Probably not, but still the fact that an artifact like Burn Rate exists is interesting in and of itself. Burn Rate is the story of a company that I’d never heard of, written by the founder himself, whom I’d never heard of. Which means the book could only end badly. But for that reason alone it was entirely fascinating, watching all the wrong turns and moments of personal hubris lead towards greater and greater humiliations.

Burn Rate was published in 1998, and concerned events that occurred roughly within a three year period starting in 1994. Let’s put this in context. “The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998, in the form of a $100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist”. So the book ended with nary a mention of Google—the 800 pound gorilla was not yet a figment in the minds of its eventual founders. And yet all throughout the book I could sense it right around the corner.

It was a fun read because I knew how it was going to turn out. Well, I know how things are now. When the author mused on whether the future would go this way or that, I knew exactly which way it went. When he nailed the future on the head, he sounded completely prescient, but when he was doubtful, he ended up parroting the recycled fears of the traditional media world—that we still hear to this day. Still, I really enjoyed reading one history of what led to where we are now, even though this book mostly encompassed the wrong turns, dead ends, and “corrections”.

In some ways it read like a work of historical fiction. I knew all the major companies at the time, like AOL, Excite, CNet, Yahoo, and Microsoft, and yet the names of all the players seemed imagined. I found myself wondering, what ever happened to Michael Wolff, the author, and his company Wolff New Media? A quick Google search told me that he’s involved in yet another online venture I’d never heard of (Newser) that sounded like wistful throwback to the days of traditional media. And in somewhat sadder news, I found his recent affair and divorce plastered all over Gawker. Telling.

“Time itself is telegraphed out of existence,” declared the Daily Telegraph of London, a newspaper whose very name was chosen to give the impression of rapid up-to-date delivery of news.

The Daily Telegraph is such a great anachronistic name for a newspaper. A name which has become so commonplace in the market that you don’t ever stop to think about what it actually refers back to. Given the pending collapse of the newspaper industry, I’ve found myself wondering: where is the Daily TCP/IP? (Or god forbid, the Daily Tweet.)

Obviously it’s all around us, the blogosphere, Google, Twitter, Bloglines, Facebook. Boing Boing probably comes the closest, as far as a functional analogue recast in the new medium, but still, for nostalgia’s sake, I’d love to see someone bring thedailytcpip.com to life.

So I just finished reading this book called The Victorian Internet about the transition between the pre-telegraph age, and the post-telegraph age, a transition that took less than 20 years, in which the maximum velocity of messages accelerated from the speed of a horse or boat to the speed of electric current in a wire.

It seems to parallel very nicely the messy transition we’re experiencing right now between the newspaper age and the internet age which Clay Shirky’s crystallized in his recent post “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”:

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.

As an aside, it’s somewhat scary to think of a newspaperless world. How will I explain to my grandmother, the first female editor of the Ohio University Post, the first women hired by the Editor and Publisher located in NYC, copy editor of the Buffalo Courier Express, editor of the Amherst Bee—a newspaper woman if there ever was one—that newspapers are becoming obsolete. Not news, and certainly not journalism, but the newspaper format she knows and loves. This time Clay Shirky has something quite hopeful to say:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

Thinking back to the book, I was really taken by a story from the Crimean War, which was the first large conflagration fought in that post-telegraph era. Previously the British newspapers had published the times and details about ships’ comings and goings, partly for transparency, partly to ride the wave of popular support for the war. In the pre-telegraph era, news of a departing military ship traveled no faster than the ship itself. So there was no security risk of publishing that information in the paper. Tom Standage writes:

Normally the troops would have outstripped the news of their arrival. But with the telegraph network marching across Europe to the enemy in St. Petersburg, daily reports of the British plans, lifted from that day’s copy of the Times, could be telegraphed to Russia.

This is inconceivable to us firmly entrenched in the post-telegraph era. It’s hard to imagine a world where the very act of printing something doesn’t also make it instantly knowable and accessible.

When you rotate the cover of the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Princess Bride DVD by 180 degrees, it still reads “princess bride”. Go ahead, turn your laptop upside down.

I just discovered that this is known as an ambigram.

Way back in July of 2007 I got this email out of the blue:

Hi, Justin,

I’m an author and I ran across your blog while searching for descriptions of San Francisco homes or apartment buildings.

I have a series of books set in San Francisco, and in this particular book I have law enforcement officers who are conducting a raid on a home. Would you mind answering a few questions? I need to know things like are there alleyways behind the homes, or are the only exits through the front windows, front entrance, and garage entrance? I know it probably depends on the home and the neighborhood, but I don’t want to stick alleyways somewhere they shouldn’t be, etc. I do like to make things as difficult as possible for my characters. :-)

Thank you in advance.

Cheyenne McCray

In typical Justin-fashion, I responded with a minor treatise on San Francisco apartments’ entrances, exits, and alleyways. Fast forward to just before Thanksgiving of this year, and Cheyenne wrote back to let me know that the book, Dark Magic, had been published, and asked whether I’d like a copy? Of course!

Where she writes:

Special thanks to Justin Watt of justinsomnia.org who gave me a little extra advice on San Francisco when I tracked him down on the Internet. And surprisingly didn’t run when I started telling him about Demons, warrior Fae, and modern-day witches in his city.

Aww, thanks! It’ll take more than some warrior Fae to scare me away. *Googles warrior fae*

Obviously my curiosity is piqued by Jake Macgregor’s “broad, chiseled shoulders,” but, should I just read Dark Magic, or should I really expand my horizons and start at the beginning of the series, with Forbidden Magic, Seduced by Magic, Wicked Magic, and Shadow Magic? Hmm, tough one.