Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

The shiny new robot of our imagination tarnishes. Technology was supposed to make life freer and weapons smarter, but complications arise.

In the blooming land of the Internet, a worm slithers through the garden. A script made of code written by a student is causing millions of dollars in damage to thousands of computers. they are calling it “The Great Worm.”

A U.S. battleship accidentally shoots down an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290, saying they mistook it for a hostile jet fighter. A few years back, the Soviets shot down a Korean airliner, killing a similar amount, also concluding computer data lead to a mistake.

Meanwhile the presidential election looms: vice presidential war hero and former CIA brain George Bush goes against everyman union guy Michael Dukakis.

It seems more like Reagan’s legacy against everyone who complained during his eight years. Reagan, who was already so old when he took office, was showing further signs of age. His personality, more than his hair, greyed. But Bush still wins and with it comes a “New World Order.”

But this new world isn’t necessarily a political order of allied countries, it’s the emerging digital world that brings a new information-based society. And with this new society a unique philosophy emerges.

The reign of televangelists is taking a beating as one of its most prominent leaders, Jimmy Swaggart, repeats over and over that he has sinned.

The simplicity of the ’80s dissolves in front of our faces, disappearing like beer from a Keg in someone’s absent parents’ living room. Too many people can’t hold their liquor, as evidenced by the doll heads floating in the aquarium, exploded eggs in the microwave.

We cap off the night off at a hotel room abandoned by a previous party, filling its roaring whirlpool with beer bottles floating clashing together in rhythm.

There is no greater message in this recklessness, but that is part of what makes it more reckless. It is like a return to James Dean “Rebel Without a Cause” days, long before Haight-Ashbury bloomed with perhaps too many rebels with too many causes.

The old hippie parents now cringe like their parents once did at the senselessness of youth.

I get my first piece published in the local paper, it’s a satirical take on The Who’s song “My Generation”:

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation

People don’t need to put us down,
Just because we haven’t got around.

Things I say seem awfully cold,
Seems we died before we grew old.

No use talkin’ ’bout my generation–
Coke or Pepsi is the choice of this nation.

Lucy in the sky singin’ ‘You’ve got to be free,’
Is now a satellite beamin’ us MTV.

Senators and congressmen never heeded the call.
Our first heroes: businessmen snortin’ up in the stall,

Hippies who danced at Woodstock,
Now chase profits in Wallstreet Stock.

‘To everything turn, turn, turn,’
For all our things, earn, earn, earn!

The carefree who shouted ‘Make love, not war,’
Are stifled in the eyes of the AIDS-ridden whore.

The new mother nature takin’ over:
An electronic wasteland mocking the poor.

Where are the protests against what we’ve done to this place?
Nature protests alone in floods, famines and earthquakes.

Where are the guardians, the prophets of doom?
Or were they the silent screams in the womb?

Our progress is regress, looking within.
But who needs religion? Why worry ’bout sin?

Turn on the television, tune in and tune out.
What will awaken us, nuclear fallout?

Forget your future when you forget your past.
Where is our revolution, are we too fast?

Agree or not with this perception,
I’m first to admit, I’m no exception.

Ain’t tryin’ to cause no big sensation,
Just talkin’ ’bout my generation.

Like a Maple tree whose leaves turn from green to yellow before falling, the 80s are already showing signs of Autumn. Reagan went in for prostate surgery and is being hounded by a allegations of trading arms for hostages, Michael Jackson went from “Thriller” to “Bad,” Jaws 4 is released, and a new drug called Prozac promises to make one feel good again.

Things are overstaying their welcome, imitating the shiny past for the last fleeting moments as the 80′s euphoria fades. If America is going to come off this high it’s been riding for most the decade, we’re going to need a lot of these new anti-depressants to get through it. Prozac will sell big.

Everything is getting smaller and faster, IBM unveils a computer so thin it resembles a book, you open it like a book and it sits on your lap — echoing Apple’s sentiment that computers will be in the hands of many, not just a few.

America is feeling more cheery and “together” than perhaps any time since the 1950′s, so they say. This culminates in an event known as Hands Across America. The perscription of the day is to relieve 80′s consumption-induced guilt by donating to celebrity-endorsed charities.

Afterall, this is an age where celebrities speak directly to mainstream America through the several radio stations and half-dozen television stations that rule the zeigeist.

And now this unified mainstream reached its peak with Hands Across America. As naively hopeful as it seemed, the idea was to join hands in an unbroken human chain from the East to West Coast.

At 3:00 p.m. on May 25th, hands joined across America in an impressive chain. It may have been broken in various sparsley populated points, but it showed the world a unified and content America backed by the musicians and actors the world adored.

And the radio stations we all listen to, that play the same handful of songs we all hear, together played the Hands theme song at that moment.

Both Samantha Smith and the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov are dead. Andropov died of kidney failure and young Smantha, who wrote the letter, passed in an airplane accident. But the new kind of relationship they introduced progresses as Mikhail Gorbachev takes the helm.

Gorbachev has almost a comedic nature, and introduced heady concepts as glasnost, which means openness, and perestroika which means restructuring.

While the Russians are moving forward, we suffer a major setback at home, and our new confidence is shaken.

Someone rushes into social studies class and announces that the Space Shuttle Challenger just exploded after takeoff. A school teacher was on board.

Nobody really knew what to make of it. It didn’t conform to the velocity of the day: swaggering confidence, seizing the future with a no-questions-asked smile, Rambo, big hair and Mr. T: “Whatchu lookin’ at fool!”

After getting home from school I watch with the rest of the country as the networks play back the first 73 seconds of the space shuttle charging toward the heavens, only to suddenly break apart in a burst of flames.

They play it over and over again so much that the experience became numb. Maybe this is a modern psychological defense mechanism to something tragic, to replay a tragic event so many times that it loses its original bite.