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Acknowledgements I acknowledge being deeply implicated as everyone else in this chronicle of events which took place circa 1996 concerning River Bend Public Library and I’m only sorry that I had to leave so many people out. I acknowledge using names from popular fiction to protect the innocent, the guilty, and myself; writing as I am, under the Federal Witness Protection Program. I acknowledge falling in love with Marian the Librarian while watching The Music Man on television more times than perhaps may have been healthy for an impressionable boy surrounded by singing, dancing sisters. I acknowledge singing along with the songs on the red vinyl Music Man LP as we did chores, washing dishes, windows, walls, and vacuuming carpets with the big brown Kirby, expertly wielding every one of its attachments. Without adult supervision, working together, and singing along is how I remember it. Mom was out running errands and Dad was at the office or on the road or at a sales convention. Dad was a travelling salesman, much like those carpet baggers on the train in the movie. “You’ve got to know the territory,” he would agree while they sang and danced. It was all about knowing your customer base and staying in touch. Sitting around the Christmas tree stuffing envelopes with company calendars was another of our family traditions. I acknowledge no conscious memory of prior imprinting when I started working at the library. Only after completing this manuscript did I recover my memory of an early infatuation with lady librarians. I acknowledge taking detailed notes during meetings in the library, at public hearings, in boardrooms and in backrooms, at bars, and during parties; and I recall more than once looking around and wondering why nobody else was writing this stuff down, because something was
203 definitely happening. The internet was changing everything and it was all happening at once. All we had to do was hold on and hope to survive the voyage, just like the narrator of Two Years Before the Mast, which I acknowledge using as my model with this goal: to write a book about the impact of the internet as an epic ocean voyage. An adventure story told from the perspective of a common seaman, “learning the ropes,” travelling to distant lands, meeting all kinds of people on the shores of a new world. I acknowledge delusions of grandeur. I acknowledge failing to live up to expectations and promising more than I can deliver. I acknowledge starting out on a Tanget 486© with Windows 95© using Microsoft WORD©. Everything was perfectly linear until I until I started moving files back and forth between it and the computers at the library running Windows Millenium©. Incompatibiliy problems developed, the mouse stopped responding, the cursor froze on the monitor. Then the screen went green and all all it would show is FATAL ERROR : Abort? Fail? Re-try? I acknowledge Pat and Jake at The Bookshelf taking the dead pc off my hands in exchange for a 1996 Macintosh Performa©. It was like being re-born when the Mac powered up and I saw the folder on the desktap labelled DESKTOP FOLDERS which Jake had rescued from the old pc. Last I saw of the Tangent 486, it was still in service, running MS-DOS Space Invaders© in the game room at The Bookshelf. All retired computers should have such a happy afterlife. I acknowledge that half of the manuscript was written before it even ocurred to me that I could re-create a reasonable facsimile of riverrun, the library newsletter that plays so central a part of this story. I acknowledge e-Bay as the place where I got WORD for Mac, Pagemaker© 6.5, and a flatbed scanner from a guy in Seattle. A wealth of old woodcuts were easily available
204 from the library, and I used their T-1 internet lines to download historic photos from the American Memory section of the Library of Congresss. When the Mac’s monitor died, I bought a 22-inch AMD at Computerworld, and I acknowledge sending flamemail to them, demanding my rebate. Why do you think it would take them six months to mail a fifty dollar check? I acknowledge that none of this would be possible if not for the Mac guy at Keystone College Bookstore when I came in bearing my Macintosh, looking for a twenty-two pin cable so I could output the newsletter issues for printing as PDF documents. We’re talking 35-megabyte files on a computer equipped with only a floppy drive. It was exactly as if a gestating infant was trapped inside its mother’s womb. —They don’t make ‘em anymore, said the student-tech, backing away in horror, recognizing me from previous tech-support nightmares, such as making the AMD monitor compatible with the Macintosh. —Wait a minute, the Mac guy said, in sudden inspiration, I have something that might work for you, instead. Darting into the backroom, he triumphantly returned with a ZIP drive, cables, and a 100 megabyte ZIP disk. —It works, he said, but it’s got a squeaky wheel. Take it. Please. —How much? I said, reaching for my wallet. I’ll pay. —It’s obsolete. You can have it, he said, thrusting the unit into my hands as if pushing me away along with it and everything else not created before 1999.