Internet before and its growing pains (2/5)

I found another external hard drive, and I am pretty sure the file is on it, but my MacBook doesn’t recognize it. I tried my other HP laptop and there it is: FREECOM! 74,5 GB of data. If only I remembered the file name…
I did find another file of a list from 2011. It was a Facebook message that I had carefully prepared in a Word file, a serious effort to figure out why the person, Ben, I liked, liked a lot, hadn’t written me back. It was a list of 35 possible reasons I imaged could explain it. It was also a way to communicate something like “Hi, it’ s okay if it is one of these reasons, or whatever reason it is, just don’t leave me hanging here.” My first experience with ghosting.

1) you fell down the stairs or bumped your head and you have no idea what I’m talking about, 2) you changed your mind, 3) you met somebody else, 4) you think silence is the best way, 5) I said something that upset you 6) you are afraid, 7) you don’t want to wait for me, 8) you’re just not that into me, 9) you feel depressed, 10) something changed in your surroundings, 11) you are actually gay, 12) me buying a house scared you 13) you want the situation to go away, 14) you want to focus on your career, 15) you think I am lying, 16) you have no idea what you want, 17) you are confused, 18) I expect too much from you, 19) you want things to happen spontaneously, 20) you are deadly ill, 21) I haven’t received your messages, 22) you want to have sex with as many woman as you can, 23) they kidnapped you at the Ritz, 24) you don’t want to hurt me, 25) you don’t want to disappoint me, 26) your best friend is in love with me, 27) you weren’t thinking about me, 28) I need to ask you some other time, 29) you want me, 30) you don’t want me to come to America 31) you don’t understand me, 32) you don’t like writing emails, 33) you have other things to think about, 34) you felt sorry for me, 35) it is a secret, 36) <fill in yourself>

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee created the first website and launched the World Wide Web. I was ten, living through a pivotal moment in the history of the internet. During that time, we went from an office and a train ride where you could smoke freely everywhere to lunch breaks and trains full of people absorbed in their mobile phones. This is just one of many changes. What happened on a personal, individual and social level? Was this the only path, or did we pass some crossroads?