The Burrow

I found the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project's 2009 Predictions Survey on Time Goes By and found myself waxing eloquent while making predictions on issues I know nothing about. Nor did I have any notion if what I was saying was true. But it was fun to rant and rave in someone else's venue... and the instructions said that they'd take you more seriously if you started the screed with your name. THAT gave me cause for pause. Was I me myself going to be answering the questions or would Ashleigh weigh in? Because this felt somewhat less public than the Burrow , and because it seemed scholarly and worldly, A/B took a back seat and I was on my way..... though with the question of identity firmly lodged in my brain. Will Google make us stupid? I giggle now when I think of it. It's a great question. It's also not an easy one, and I wanted to get it right. The pressure was on. From "how will we think" the survey moved on to ...

A cardboard backed board and 100 wooden tiles in a small, burgundy box. 4 racks to hold the tiles, a velvety bag (Crown Royal?), a pad and a pencil. No plugs. No plastic. A table was nice, but the floor worked just as well. The junior version had pictures, but the grown-ups got to play with pink and blue squares with little points around their edges. That was Scrabble up until the Web got its claws into it. First there was Scrabulous. Suddenly, it was possible to play on-line with strangers. Real time games on a familiar board. You could play and chat and challenge. They kept statistics and graphs and charts. It was almost like playing with the Little Cuter at the kitchen table, except that now she was beating me with alarming regularity. Alas, Hasbro and Mattel decided that their rights were more important than our fun, and the lawyers got involved and there was a lot of on-line screeching but "the man" won and Scrabulous was history . I tried Lexulous, their next i...