The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate award for May is….
Surely I can’t be the only one here that remembers the “flying fickle finger of fate” awards from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh in. The award given to elected officials and other deserving individuals for their actions, talent, or lack of talent. Much like Karma has done to My Name Is Earl, even when it’s not deserved.
Today’s announcement that Time-Warner is spinning off AOL makes America Online as the perfect recipient of the F.F.F.O.F. award for ‘09. Technology in general is fickle. Who hasn’t bought a new computer to have another one introduced a few weeks later that makes yours look like an Abacus with an LCD screen? Yes, I remember when there was only a couple of ways to access the Internet. America Online or CompuServe, and I remember the first peer to peer file sharing was done by dialing into a friend’s computer directly.
AOL was big. It made a lot of money. So much so it bought Time-Warner and created the biggest media company ever. But fate and Karma sometimes do not play well, and the marriage was not perfect after the honeymoon. Today, Time-Warner says no more. Go and make your own way AOL. See, with broadband connections we no longer need an interface like AOL offered. The software was a huge resource drain on your PC anyway. It took over your networking, and generally caused frustrations after each updated version was released. Trust me I know.
So with the speed and fickleness that technology evolves, is investing in new technology a good thing to do? Is the government going to get the next award? You can bet your sweet bippy on that, but they have at least tried. I wasn’t a big fan of delaying the conversion, but the number of households not ready has been reduced by half to a little over three million households in three months. The rest will get ready on June 13th.
We sometimes forget how much we depend on something until it’s gone. Don’t let those coupons expire. Get a box “just in case”. Buy a new TV or whatever your budget allows. Don’t be the next recipient of the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate!
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Always called it the “Whoopee Finger”. Thanks for the flashback.
A decade later subscribed to AOL on a Mac Se40 with an external 14.4 modem and purchased a few on-line items long before Amazon.