My latest #LocalHistory post has more than a tiny element of #PersonalHistory, as it's about my elementary #school (and its predecessor of the same name). I was lucky enough to find some great #ClassPhotos and shots of the #playground, where I spent thousands of hours of my youth.
#histodons #upstateNY #UpstateNewYork #Schenectady #ScotiaNY
#PersonalHistory
In undergrad at Brigham Young University I told a friend I had declared #psychology as my major. The friend misquoted a former president of the LDS church: "Spencer W. Kimball said a degree in the social sciences is nothing but a degree in the errors of man." The #LDS church's relationship to #socialScience has been similar to that of some other American Christian religions--i.e., lots of suspicion and dismissal, with occasional full condemnation.
30+ years later I have to say that the "errors of man" has been a deeply satisfying, endlessly interesting domain of study.
#story #PersonalHistory #religion #science #byu #exmormon #highered
Today I worked on a desk that is almost a hundred years old.
It was commissioned in the late 1920s or early ’30s by my grandfather, for his sons. One of them was my father. It’s made of walnut, built in a workshop somewhere in Muntenia, in a time when objects were meant to last.
This desk has travelled through three generations, through houses, wars, relocations, and decades of quiet persistence. My grandfather touched it, then my father, and now it’s the surface where I write.
There’s a small crack on the top — old wood has its own memory. I don’t hide it; it’s part of the story.
When I rest my hand on it, I feel a steady line stretching back through the people who came before me. Not nostalgia, but orientation.
A reminder that I’m not starting from nothing.
That I belong to a thread that continued, even when lives became complicated or broke apart.
This desk is not furniture. It’s a witness. It’s the only family object that still works alongside me, almost a century later.
The photo will come later.
I just wanted to write this down first — a note to myself, at a time when I need to remember that some things do remain steady in this world.
#WritingCommunity #FamilyHistory #Heirlooms #Memory #WalnutDesk
#Romania #PersonalHistory #WritersLife
How does war erase personal history? Vitaly Shevchenko reveals his abandoned childhood home in Verkhnya Krynytsya, Zaporizhzhia is now a Russian military post, uncovered through satellite imagery analysis by Richard Irvine-Brown. The village, once peaceful, suffers from occupation and dam collapse devastation. Discover the human cost and shattered community. Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gj7p96nd0o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss #VitalyShevchenko #Ukraine #Zaporizhzhia #RussianOccupation #BBC #WarInUkraine #SatelliteImagery #PersonalHistory
The Day I Said No to Google – DrWeb’s Domain
A personal essay… from DrWeb
The Day I Said No to Google
“I am probably the only person I know who said ‘no’ to Google in a meeting with Larry Page and Sergey Brin…”
Confession: Given my birthday coming up (hint!), I am older than dirt. Some of the memories remain, thank genes I guess. But, others are foggy. I remember the day, but the exact date escapes me. I remember the meeting, but in many ways, it has blurred into meetings of my life for business. So, I cheated, kinda. You get to decide. Claude, a creative intelligence, assisted me with the writing. I edited. This is what we did together. It felt like the best way to tell this old story now. Let’s travel back to yesteryear.. the Internet was young… One history note, I was the first Webmaster at DIALOG, and employed there from 1995-1997, when along with many others, MAID bought DIALOG, and I was let go, fired. Carry your things out in box time. My time at America Online was December, 1998, Product Manager for AOL NetFind, until November, 1999. Enjoy the memory lane!
The Meeting Above the Shop
The afternoon sun streamed through the windows of that small conference room above a Palo Alto shop, casting long rectangles of California light across our makeshift boardroom table. It was one of those perfect Silicon Valley days where the air itself seemed to hum with possibility, but the fluorescent overhead lights and generic office chairs reminded us this was business, not a social call.
I’d arranged my materials carefully before they arrived—a brief summary report for my AOL team, printed specs for what we needed, bottled water for everyone. The kind of preparation that had become second nature after years in this business [and later becoming DIALOG’s first webmaster dealing with sophisticated databases and searches], now managing search for America Online in this digital Wild West. Twenty-five million AOL users were counting on decisions like this one, though they’d never know it.
When Larry and Sergey walked in, there was something almost academic about them—Larry doing most of the talking while Sergey hung back, observing. Their energy was unmistakably that of people who believed they were onto something big. But belief and business results were different things, as I’d learned the hard way. Perhaps it was like meeting Steve Jobs, early, in his garage.
We think we can scale this in ways nobody else can, Larry was saying, sketching out their vision with the kind of confident hand gestures. You could hear the enthusiasm.
The algorithm they called PageRank sounded revolutionary in theory—ranking pages by how other pages linked to them, like academic citations. Elegant, certainly. But elegant theories didn’t always survive contact with millions of real users hitting your servers every day. Then, at AOL, we were still in the era of typing in code and managing data with spreadsheets, so, yes, after all—proven performance mattered more than brilliant concepts.
The afternoon conversation had that particular rhythm of meetings where both sides already knew the likely outcome. We asked about customers—they had few. Performance metrics under load—they were working on it. Detailed technical specifications—still being refined.
I felt those were all reasonable answers for a startup, but AOL couldn’t run on reasonable answers. We needed proven, and growign solutions, the kind Excite was delivering with their concept-based search algorithm and comprehensive portal approach—news, weather, email, the one-stop destination our users expected. I used Excite, so were many early adopters.
I found myself watching Sergey more than listening to Larry at one point. There was something in his quiet attention that suggested he understood exactly what we were really evaluating. Not just their technology, but their readiness to handle the weight of AOL’s scale and expectations. Maybe he knew, as I was beginning to suspect, that this was more a friendly courtesy call than a serious negotiation.
The meeting wound down with handshakes and the kind of polite enthusiasm that masks mutual recognition—they knew we weren’t ready to bet on an unproven system, and we knew they weren’t ready for us yet. Outside, that sunlit, warm California afternoon continued, indifferent to the small pivotal moment that had just passed in a conference room above a Palo Alto shop.
Later, writing up my report for the team, I found myself thinking about Steve Case back at headquarters in Virginia. Our larger-than-life CEO had built AOL by making bold bets, but also by knowing when to stick with what worked. Excite had customers, track records, proven performance under the kind of load we’d throw at them. Our homework showed the numbers, and it was a future option we felt we had to explore.
Their concept-based searching could understand meaning beyond mere keyword matching—sophisticated technology that had already proven itself with millions of daily users. It wasn’t glamorous compared to Larry and Sergey’s academic theories, but it was safe. And yet, choosing Excite felt like the next step, of what would be many.
I never found out if my report made it all the way to Case’s desk, but I liked to think it did—one small decision in the endless stream of choices that kept twenty-five million people connected to the emerging world of the web. At the time, it felt like the right call. Careful. Responsible. Business-smart.
The irony, of course, would only become clear later.
#1999 #2000 #2025 #AI #AmericaOnline #AOL #California #Essay #Excite #Google #History #Irony #Opinion #PaloAlto #PersonalHistory #Science #searchTechnology #Technology #UnitedStates #UniversityAvenue
Gary Shteyngart’s Tragicomedy of the Penis in “The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong”
I ran across this picture of the most important person in my life and keep feeling all the feelings over it. We were 18, and she was helping me out with a class project, glamming herself up in a way that she didn't ordinarily do then to pose for this picture (the purpose of which I've forgotten).
All I can see is: we were so young, and she is so beautiful. And still is, an awful lot of years later.
Special Collections: Where the old stuff never gets old – Deseret News
Special Collections: Where the old stuff never gets old
Librarian Cherie Willis shows off the Main Library’s historical treasures
Published: Aug 31, 2025, 8:00 p.m. MDT
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Librarian Cherie Willis shows “The Birds of America” by John James Audubon, printed in 1860, at The City Library in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. It is the library’s most valuable piece. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Purchase ImageBy Lee Benson
Lee has written slice-of-life columns for the Deseret News since 1998.
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It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, the library has just opened, and Cherie Willis is already having a good time.
Cherie is the gatekeeper for the Special Collections section of the Salt Lake City Main Library, a room chock full of treasured books, publications and other artifacts, some of them dating back well before the library’s beginnings in 1898.
For Cherie, who has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in library science from BYU, it’s clear that, to her, the old stuff never gets old. It’s like we just opened King Tut’s tomb.
The materials are all Utah related. There are no first editions of Shakespeare or Cervantes. But there is a first edition of “Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley.” Published in 1855, the lengthy book, a long-ago precursor of Google Maps, goes into great detail describing how to get from England to the Salt Lake Valley without winding up in Bolivia.
“Getting here from England was tough,” says Cherie. “Back then it was like getting to Mars.”
A list of those with scarlet fever, smallpox and diphtheria is pictured in the special collections area of The City Library in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. If someone on the list had library materials, the books were burned upon their return in an attempt to stop the spread of disease. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Purchase ImageNext, Cherie holds up a rare (although not first-edition) copy of “A Study in Scarlet,” a book published in 1887 by Arthur Conan Doyle that introduced Sherlock Holmes and his trusty confidant Watson to the world for the first time. The reason the book written by an Englishman and published in England is in Special Collections in Salt Lake City is because a major part of it takes place in Utah, where let’s just say Mormons (as Doyle called them) do not emerge as heroes. No one rushed to buy “Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley” after reading this one.
To counter that, Cherie produces an early edition of “City of the Saints,” the 1862 book written by English adventurer and travel writer (think Bill Bryson a century earlier) Sir Richard Burton, who, unlike his countryman A. Conan Doyle, personally visited Salt Lake City and, as Cherie points out, “wrote nicely about us.”
There’s lots more dealing with Utah’s interconnected roots with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including a well-preserved copy of “Manuscript Found,” the unpublished and unfinished manuscript written by Solomon Spaulding in the early 1800s that critics of the church contended Joseph Smith used as the basis for the Book of Mormon.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Special Collections: Where the old stuff never gets old – Deseret News
#2025 #America #Books #DeseretNews #FamilyHistory #History #Libraries #Library #PersonalHistory #Reading #Technology #UnitedStates #Utah #Writing
"Somehow, my fact-checking job had slipped me into the envelope of another human’s most personal realm." — Susan Choi on fact-checking the New Yorker for the Yale Review https://yalereview.org/article/susan-choi-new-yorker-fact-checking?src=longreads #journalism #personalhistory #magazines #factcheck
I went home again, back to where I once belonged, and wrote about what it means to paddle the river channel where I learned to love the outdoors and being on the water.
#memoir #memories #kayaking #paddling #kayak #upstateNY #UpstateNewYork #PersonalHistory
April 2025
# 70
SOMOS DOIS ABISMOS (WE ARE TWO ABYSSES)
dir Kopal Joshy, 2025
Round and round the hole we go.
#IndieLisboa2025 #documentary #portugal #personalhistory #widower #death #love #writing #landscape
Continuing thoughts on my own history – I came across an image from 1977 that represents a remarkable moment in time for me, as well as a challenge. I was never satisfied with how this printed – but times and technology have changed. So have I.
https://mynonurbanlife.com/choices/
#memoir #essay #PersonalHistory #photography #photograph #BWPhoto #blackandwhite
Happy Publication Day! SFWA published my essay aggregating advice for authors (+ pretty much anyone else) thinking about donating their documents to archives some day!
Read it here --> https://www.sfwa.org/2025/01/21/preservation-guidance-for-authors-planning-to-donate-their-personal-papers-to-archives/
#writingcommunity #writing #writinglife #family #preservation #archives #history #sfwa #reading #personalhistory #papers #authorialpapers #documents #community #research #culture #authors #writers
The In-Betweeners
https://therealists.org/?p=8116
Capturing Gen Z’s attention
In early December I was invited to give a 30 minute presentation about The Realists for recent graduates of a prestigious business school in Paris. Their teacher told me that the students were already aware of many of the topics I typically write about – Big Tech, surveillance capitalism, behavioral manipulation – especially after watching the documentary The Social Dilemma. My task: to keep my presentation fresh and original to impress an audience that grew up online.
In the days leading up to the lecture, I was really intimidated. I had shown my documentary The Illusionists to auditoriums with over 300 spectators – but presenting to a class of 30 or so Gen Z students felt far more daunting. What could I possibly tell them that would grab and hold their attention?
Until I found an angle – that the audience eventually appreciated.
Meet a Geriatric Millennial
I am a geriatric millennial: I had an analog childhood in the 1980s; discovered the Web 1.0 in my teens, and the birth of social media once I was a university student.
I have this unique perspective of being in between worlds: I experienced socialization away from screens for most of my childhood and early adolescence; and the tidal wave of the internet and the monumental changes it brought to us as humans once I was already a young adult.
My dad worked in technology and would bring home early computer prototypes. Our first laptop, in the late 1980s, came in a heavy grey plastic suitcase that opened to reveal a keyboard on one side and a small orange, low resolution screen on the other. The availability of the internet would be a few years away… all I could do was play around with DOS commands and Paintbrush.
An IBM computer from the 1980s. Source: Wikimedia
At home, I would be engrossed in these new technological tools. At school, none of my classmates could relate to these experiences, as personal computers were still rare and prohibitively expensive in Italy at the time.
While preparing the presentation for the class of business graduates in December, I realized that I have always felt in between worlds. One foot in the digital world; one foot out in the real world. It’s been my normal my entire life. And being an in-betweener can offer a powerful perspective to what is happening to our world today.
An in-betweener doesn’t accept new things as normal; an in-betweener is reminded of what “normal” used to be like and questions every innovation. Maybe this is why I am so drawn to the writings of the late Neil Postman – especially his superb book Technopoly – as he held the same critical attitude towards technology.
The Last Generation
I belong to the last generation that grew up offline. The LAST one. Generations that came after me experienced the internet and social media from middle school… or even earlier. The only people who could relate to this are my late grandparents. They were born in a world without television… and then, in their adult years, they discovered this “magical” box that would bring the outside world in their living room.
As a geriatric millennial I distinctly remember what friendships used to be like – nurtured in the real world, away from screens. Sure, I would spend hours on the phone talking to friends in high school, once I got home from school. But there weren’t technological companies involved in mediating our communications, gamifying our interactions with hearts and likes and visible metrics. I am not saying one way is better than the other. Do not mistake this as nostalgia for a time now gone. Mine is just the testimony of someone who remembers what it was like to hang out for hours with friends in the afternoon, after school, in the absence of the internet, social media and the walled gardens of Big Tech.
I was an in-betweener as a child and adolescent, dipping in and out of two worlds. And I am still an in-betweener today, in 2024. How? You may wonder.
Half the day online; half the day offline
I wake up at around 6am every day. I immediately go online to read the news (bad habit, I know) or resume reading a book on my Kindle. Then I have coffee, get ready, and wake up my little one at around 8am. As soon as my child is with me, the phone goes in my back pocket… and stays there until I drop her off at daycare. I go home to work, power up my computer and tablet and dip back in the digital world for about 6 hours. When, at 3:30pm, it’s time to go pick her up from daycare, the computer and tablet shut off for the rest of the day and the phone returns in my back pocket… where it will stay for the next 5 hours, until my child is asleep.
I’ve been putting away my smartphone when I’m with my child ever since she was born: I never wanted to give her the impression that whatever appeared on this small black rectangle was more important than her. My number one priority has been – for 3 years now – to give her my undivided attention.
It’s fascinating to see how we model behaviors to our little ones and how much they learn by observing us.
Ever since my child’s toddlerhood, she has often yearned to imitate what mommy does. At home, we have had an unplugged, inactive cordless phone lying around in the living room. I explained to my child that that black object is a phone. Next time I caught her playing with it, she was trying to shove it in her back pocket – even if her pants that day didn’t have one. So she simply took the phone and sat on it. And then looked up at me and said “phone pocket.” It was hilarious. And incredibly endearing and powerful. When it happened my girl wasn’t even 2 yet… maybe she was 18 months old. And yet, she knew what I kept in my back pocket was a phone. And that it belonged there when we were together.
Takeaways from a tech-free, TV-free life
What happens when a 3 year old doesn’t have access to television, smartphones or tablets for “entertainment”? The entire world around them is an object of wonder, to be observed with the utmost curiosity and vigilance. A 360° interactive playground.
For example, on the way to daycare in the morning, she often screams “Mom! The moon!” The first time it happened I thought to myself: “what is she talking about it’s daytime” But then I looked up to the sky and saw a banana-shaped tiny sliver of light. Sure enough, there was a crescent moon barely visible behind some fluffy clouds.
It takes my girl less than 5 seconds to spot the moon on a clear morning, whenever we leave our apartment building. The moon… planes… cats perched on a windowsill… my offline, screen-free toddler spots interesting things all the time – an inspires me to be present, in the real world, and to notice interesting things too, so I can point them out to her.
Conversely, on the way to daycare, we often come across people walking while staring down at their phones, completely oblivious to the world around them. How many crashes have I averted! When I’m in a rush, pushing her stroller, I often feel like I’m playing a real life video game. Think: Frogger, but the obstacles and dangers are not cars and trucks… they are fast-walking humans whose eyes are hypnotized by cell phones and who do not notice incoming pedestrians.
It’s a bit awkward to be with my toddler and observe her observe these people who are completely engrossed in their screens. Whenever I get on public transportation with her, we are often the only people not staring down at a screen during the journey. She often tries to smile and establish eye contact with people – especially if someone is dressed in her favorite color – but it’s rare to have people look up and smile back. Fellow moms and dads, or people over the age of 70… but that’s about it. Luckily I always pack books, so we can read stories… and I can pull her attention away from this new normal of disconnection. My explanation to her “they’re probably writing to or reading a message from their mom.” Ha!
The Pursuit of Human Happiness
Seeing what makes my child tick, what she needs to be happy (attention! love! safety! her favorite stories!) is the biggest drive for me to make a documentary on technology and how it is changing us as humans.
Kids a decade older than my child are witnessing an epidemic of depression and anxiety – that has coincided with the introduction of smartphones and gamified social media platforms.
The idea that my child’s happiness will one day depend on social media metrics and online popularity – subject to an opaque algorithm – just about breaks my heart and infuriates me at the same time. I intend to fiercely protect her from this ugly digital world for as long as I can… and when she’s old enough, educate her about the mechanisms driving it and teach her to question everything and to follow the money.
My child may one day see me as an out of touch dinosaur, but I will be in the position to remind her that there used to be another way. And that there still is another way – if she chooses it. The Realists’ way. Informed, aware, and keen on using tech in a mindful way, instead of being used by it.
Thanks for being here.
#digitalLiteracy #GenX #GenZ #geriatricMillennial #millennials #NeilPostman #parenting #personalHistory #screenFree #socialMedia
film, jan ‘25, # 3
A REAL PAIN
dir Jesse Eisenberg, 2024
Travels with my cousin.
#drama #family #Poland #Holocaust #history #personalhistory #America
film, dec ‘24, # 214
HERE
dir Robert Zemeckis, 2024
Time flies.
#drama #family #personalhistory #history #americanhistory #saga #20thcentury
film, dec ‘24
# 209
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY
dir Ian Bonhôte & Peter Ettedgui, 2024
Down to earth.
film, dec ‘24
# 207
JESTE NEJSEM, KÝM CHCI BÝT (I’M NOT EVERYTHING I WANT TO BE)
dir Klára Tasovská, 2024
A life in pictures.
#documentary #photography #biography #history #personalhistory #czechoslovakia #prague
film, nov ‘24
# 202
OKURIMONO
dir Laurence Lévesque, 2024
Letting go.
#PortoPostDoc2024 #documentary #personalhistory #Japan #Nagasaki #history #WWII
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