Shift. Slow and steady, gradual. Glacial. Water erosion. Streams, rivers carving canyons, valleys, inexorable. Open, free range, the wild west. Some try to through up fences, to try and contain, to own, to protect, but the best chickens run free. Cattle that graze amongst the bison. Yes, harder to find the good ones, the fat ones, to eat. Harder to get the choice trees, the best watering holes. Where the river deltas are. Then farming, planting, growing, establishment coming in. Building highways, superhighways, cities, suburbs, vast infrastructure to support way more people that the pioneers. It's the way of the world. Simple websites, served from home, from work, from universities, from science labs. To the geocities, and live journals, to the myspaces, facebooks, and twitters, and now, closing in, folding up, to slacks and news letters and medium. You need to start being on the inside again, to follow the leaders as they go underground. now that the bright lights and big city is too harsh. The settlers have come. And the pioneers don't belong. With the settlers and the towns and the cities come indoor plumbing, but also crime. And police. And prisons. So that's the internet. As I watch it change. I missed the early early days. I wasn't a pioneer. Somewhere between a pioneer and a settler, or a settler wishing he were a pioneer. and watching as they disappear under manholes, or through alleys and into basements. all the words, all the good words, all the good words I want to read, are disappearing.