What really happened …

by John Holbo on August 18, 2009

You are all wondering what Kieran is so damn sorry about (in his characteristically sociological and defensive way.)

Well. Here is a picture of our orbiting server, taken around 1910 A.D. (common era, if you prefer, you atheist.) An estimable flying fortress – sort of a cross between a siege engine and a bat. That’s to keep out spam. (Since siege towers were once called belfries, I deduce that this is a belfry bat.) No doubt it performed excellently in wind-tunnel tests. But, to make a long story short … over the weekend it crashed. And comments were, as it were, ‘crushed’ under the ‘weight’ of all that ‘wood’ and ‘canvas’. (source: Flickr.)

Aerodynamics  

But if that’s what our server looks like, you ask: Whatever does the internet as a whole resemble, eh, riddle me? It is, now that you ask, a sort of ‘City of the Future’, circa 1925:

Cityofthefuture

Now get back to work! All of you!

{ 12 comments }

1

Walt 08.18.09 at 1:46 pm

I knew this blog had a lot of implicit contempt for the unemployed, but I never expected to see it demonstrated so openly.

2

Salient 08.18.09 at 2:07 pm

Now get back to work! All of you!

No. I am going to spend the rest of the day contemplating the location of the ancillary propeller on your (bat)mobile server.

3

jholbo 08.18.09 at 2:08 pm

That’s the hell of it, walt. You want to have implicit contempt for the unemployed because that’s so la-de-dah uppercrust. But the lousy rotters are so thick skulled you just have to let it show. Have you ever tried to be explicitly implicitly contemptuous of the unemployed? It’s a full-time job, I’m telling you.

4

ajay 08.18.09 at 2:13 pm

You can tell that Holbo’s been pondering how to get one up on Cory Doctorow ever since he heard about Doctorow’s balloon.

5

bob 08.18.09 at 2:38 pm

Your ‘City of the Future’ is clearly not ‘circa 1925’ – the aeroplanes mark it as pre-WWI. A decade makes a big difference.

6

jholbo 08.18.09 at 3:02 pm

The Flickr set says that particular picture of the internet was mailed in 1925, using a 2 penny stamp. It’s sorta funny: H.G. Wells made this complaint about “Metropolis” (1927). He said that all the airplane designs were out of date. What’s interesting to me about the postcard is that it’s pre-“Metropolis”, but looks a lot like it. (Not that there wasn’t a lot of that stuff going around.

7

kid bitzer 08.18.09 at 4:41 pm

like salient, i was struck by the additional and asymmetrical propeller on the left wing of the upper craft.

ow! it hurts being struck by a propeller, even when, so far as i can tell, it is not connected to any engine.

salient failed to make salient point, however, which is that there is no way that this airplane originally had a left propeller without a right. this drawing has been photo-shopped. either a propeller has been added to the left wing, or a propeller has been deleted from the right wing. check the shadows! check the kerning!

8

Salient 08.18.09 at 4:56 pm

salient failed to make salient point, however, which is that there is no way that this airplane originally had a left propeller without a right.

Well, I had to leave something for the scholars in my wake to mop up, didn’t I? :)

9

kid bitzer 08.18.09 at 5:06 pm

and it’s no easy thing, mopping up a wake, either. i’m not sure seven maids with seven mops could do it in seven years.

unless it’s an irish wake, in which case it needs to be sopped up. or perhaps it’s an italian wake that’s all mobbed up. wake me when it’s over.

10

RobNYNY1957 08.18.09 at 6:40 pm

The upper photograph is a heavily retouched picture of a steam-powered airplane designed and allegedly flown 300 meters by a French inventor, Clement Ader, in 1897, six years before the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903. Witnesses to the event, on the other hand, said that all of the wheels may have left the ground for a moment as it trundled across a field, but nothing like controlled flight was attained.

11

jre 08.18.09 at 7:24 pm

Wikimedia’s image of Avion 3 appears to be the source of the more colorful (if brain-hurting) landscape with orbiting server. Here is why it looks so goofy in 3/4 frontal view.

12

kid bitzer 08.18.09 at 8:39 pm

thanks, jre, that’s clarifying.

not a central prop and an anomalous side-prop. instead, two symmetrical props offset from the midline and pushed forward on long cones.

oh god, now it’s looking like jane russell.

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