SUNRISE:   There was an article today on The Economist Magazine web site about the Internet as the revolution that wasn’t. Back around 1996, a lot of techno-idealists thought that the net was going to become a utopian, borderless civilization unto itself. The article cites the “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” of Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow. Mr. Barlow felt that the users of the net “inhabited a new world of creativity, equality and justice”. But as we know, along came e-commerce and pornographers and copyright lawyers and big corporations like Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner, and so went the techno-utopians. Mr. Barlow has reportedly “lost heart” about the web, and so did I after reading the rest of the article.

But wait. Does it have to be that way? I’ve noticed that a lot of people are shelling out real money to maintain non-commercial sites just to put their ideas out there and offer the chance for public comment. I myself am doing it. There are a lot of non-profit sites with mailing lists and discussion boards, places where people are talking and interacting. The Internet can yet become a Wall of Democracy, if we teach our children well. That’s why an old fogie like me, someone who was around during the Summer of Love, someone who remembers the chants of “peace, pot, microdot”, stays interested in the net. Because it’s the last chance to get in on a real revolution before I die. The one from the 1960s stalled out pretty quickly, but this one could still happen. Sure, Napster is gone, but there’s much more to a revolution than free music. We can still fight the power on the web and find common threads of humanity, and thus help our world get past its addiction to stuff like prejudice, exploitation and war. But it’s gonna take some patience.

SUNSET:   In my January 4 blog entry, I talked about the horrors of diminishment, i.e. about what happens to you when you get old. I guess that I was reflecting a bit on my Mom’s situation. Mom is over 80 and gets noticeably weaker every few months. She’s in a wheelchair now and needs help doing just about everything. Thanks to a lot of sacrifice on my brother’s part, along with the help of some visiting caregivers, she’s still living at home. What’s wrong with her? Nothing much, other than being old and a bit overweight (which is true for about half of American adults these days).

There was a recent episode of The West Wing (on NBC) where C.J., the fictional White House Press Secretary, visited her father in Ohio, only to find his life falling apart due to Alzheimer’s. The theme was the same: the horrors of diminishment.

I’m not a senior citizen yet, although I’m now closer to retirement (or hoped-for retirement) than I am to college graduation. And even though my mind still doesn’t quite believe that I’m middle aged (I still listen to that zippy music that the young people seem to enjoy so much, e.g. the Red Hot Chillis and ИickelBack, still think that the opening to Ozzie’s “Shot In The Dark” is pure musical genius), my body is quite certain that I’m no longer 20 years old. I regret it most on Friday nights, when I get home from work and need to crash; when I was a youngin’, Friday evenings were for piling into a car with friends and driving long into the night, on a weekend road trip. Now a days, I just want to get to sleep by eleven.

Yes, getting old sounds pretty horrible, especially once you find out what it really involves. But you know what? A lot of people who are actually there, who really are old and are indeed falling apart, aren’t any more miserable than the rest of us. The worst part is when things change quite suddenly, just like the weather. Right now where I live, we’re having a cold spell; for the past few days everyone was griping about it and feeling awful, myself included. But after a while, you just get used to it and keep going. Same in the summer with the heat.

Diminishment sure isn’t fun, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy life anymore. It certainly is more of a challenge to enjoy life when you’re feeling weak or sick or tired a lot of the time; you’re certainly not going to find your kicks the same way as when you were 20 and went skiing or camping or partying all weekend. But people are amazingly adaptable creatures, and even when the air is colder and the shadows are longer (and you hair is gray or gone), people can still find ways to make life worthwhile. Believe it or not.