"Who in old times ever held anything so uncalled for as an opinion? ...History, history really was, still is, the agenda of activists. The rest of us, you, me, the rest of us, are mere fans of a world view and use the news like theater—episodes, chapters in some Sabbath soul serial... If we don't have the gift for effecting change, we have the solace of criticism." - Stanley Elkin, novelist in The First Amendment as an Art form quoted in Saul Bellows It All Adds Up , Penguin Modern Classics, 2007, pp109.

When I first stumbled into the World Wide Web in 1996, it was purely for the sake of being technologically savvy.

Yes, then it had also to do with keeping in touch with and gaining quicker access to scientific advances that I was interested in. Then again, my obsession with the PC was an expensive hobby, which seemed to be an unending catching-up exercise to try outrun its obsolescence.