Circa 1990 I was a teenager feverishly dialing into Bulletin Board Systems. Much like the "BBS"es that can still be found on internet, the 1990s BBSes included a set of forums. And as far as social media went, that was all I could get hold of.
Since then the internet has exploded. Computers are cheaper, more powerful, and easier to setup than 20 years ago. I can download millions of bits per second—instead of a few hundred—making it possible to do video streaming, on-line shopping, and a host of things we could only read about in science-fiction novels.
But despite technological advances that have made a teenager's wet dreams a reality, and even though the technology is 200% different, the forums themselves haven't changed. Okay these days we have graphics and fancy fonts, whereas I had to contend with ASCII art, ANSI colours, and the occasional monochromatic gif; but the series of sequential posts, organised by topic, with their lame one line replies, is the same as ever. Ditto the trolls, the sock puppets, and the flame wars.
It's kinda like the how LCD- and Plasma- televisions have replaced ye olde Cathode Ray Tubes, yet they still behave identically. And reflecting on that leads me to two conclusions.
Firstly, it's the changes in the technology that have driven the changes in the internet. And that's gonna continue to be the case. Media commentators like to get together and plan the future of the web, but that's like trees attempting to plan continental drift; it's what happens underneath—perhaps at the level transistors—that will determine what happens to the net. Speculating about the “semantic web” is nice, but what happens when my coke can has a computer in it?
Secondly, despite all these changes, most of today's formats will be around tomorrow. In twenty years every T-shirt may be a wireless TV-screen (eat that MPAA), video messaging could be prosaically everyday, and your nan may spend her retirement in a virtual world fighting dragons. But there will still be sites where short text messages are organised by topic, allowing someone to note that a previous post made them "LoL". You see forum's – they're forever. 
It's a glorious, late September afternoon, one of the last days of summer, and the dog and I turn off the grassy bridleway into the bowers of a medieval wood. The grass takes it leave, to be replaced by dust - dust that today is flecked with sparkling blue and gold and red.
I bend down.
Tiny paper crescents, stars, ovals and rectangles--a couple of millimetres in diameter--are mixed in with the beige dirt. It's shiny paper too.
They've been spilt, I suppose; after a few yards of intrigue they'll vanish.
However a dozen yards on and the trail's still strong. Suddenly I'm piqued: what's this about and where will it lead? (Two of life's profoundest questions.)
Fifty yards later I round the corner and the trail vanishes. No, it doesn't - it's just a gap. But it's thinning; waxing and waning.
The path forks. Right goes the waxing trail. The dog and I follow.
At the bottom of the hill is a lump of black of charcoal and a new patch of grey ashes - a small campfire, presumably from last night. The trail dust doesn't carry on beyond it. This was the destination.
There are no elves or brownies to greet me at the end of the pixie dust. They've long gone. As always, I've missed the party. So life goes.
