Being in the right place at the right time.
Basically it was a matter of luck. I'd seen advertisements for modems in the various computer magazines that I often read back then, and I knew a bit about BBSs and felt more
than a tinge of interest in both of these. I'd already had a taste of hypertext
and knew that this was something that captivated me, but again, it was basically
luck. When I started my studies for an MA at Tel Aviv University the head of our
department showed us Mosaic, and I think that I was the only person in that class
for whom this immediately made a click, so perhaps it was a case of a moth being
attracted to the flame, and I was the only moth among various other flying insects.
I hadn't even been aware of the first time that I might perhaps have also been
in the right place. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I was a student at UCLA, intensely concerned with a different sort of revolution than one that might be brewing from the use of computers. The only real notice that I took of the computing center on campus was to wonder a bit about these large swirling tape recorders I'd see when
I'd walk by the computer sciences building on my way from one favorite spot on campus to another. Little did I know, and only later did I realize, that
within that building there were people working on some of the basics, the building
blocks, of the internet. Of course my attraction to the world of cyberspace isn't
to the technical side, so perhaps even had I known what was happening inside the building, I wouldn't have taken much interest. And I suppose that a .500 batting average isn't all that
bad.
Go to: Carrying cognitive baggage from the old
country