We Waited 6,000 Years for WordPress
Okay, okay, 6,000 years of recorded history was NOT waiting just for WordPress, but WP today IS part of the long-awaited Day of At One Ment... let me explain...
The first records, way back when, were made by poking a V-shaped stick into damp slabs of clay, writing the message in wedge-form (cuneiform) and setting the clay out to bake in the sun. Since the human world was run by kings and priests back then, learning the sacred magic of clay-writing was a highly-prized job... among the priestly acolytes and would-be trainees...
Technical advances to recording The Word (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God) led to dyes (ink) on cleaned sheepskin (parchment) and the records expanded from the warehouse-deposit clay-bricks to encompass the dreams and visions of Seers, men who prayed, meditated and thought they were given a glimpse of humankind's future. Oh, and while we're here, our brains can be considered computing hardware and The Word is analogous to computing software. The Word is important because it serves as the opposable thumb to the fingers of the brain. You can grasp that, can't you?
Without software the brain is nearly useless... but by the same token, running Garbage software in even the best of brains can only result in Garbage outcomes... more on this later, now back to the long walk to 1844...
Centuries passed, with a slowly growing cadre of writers copying tomes by hand, laboring year after year in a labor of love that preserved the observations, opinions, visions and fears of a small number of men through the years... and a creative minority of women, not because women were less capable than men, but because men ran the world, and did not allow or encourage women to learn, grow... create!
Paper came into being and Gutenberg created his version of a moveable-type printing press less than 60 years after Koreans created THEIR moveable-type press... but Gutenberg's had much more impact than the efforts of The Hermit Kingdom... in this way Gutenberg's primitive press created Christian Bibles incredibly faster than the time needed to hand-write (and illuminate) similar books.
Handwriting and calligraphy grew and flourished in the hands of more and more people, but reading, writing and arithmetic were still restricted to the kingly caste and the local ecclesiastics... clergy. Yes, there was a growing middle class, especially after several plagues spread through Europe and wiped out 1/5th to 1/4th most populations... suddenly the 'peasants' could demand -and GET- decent wages for their labor, because the 'nobles' had little choice: Pay or let crops ROT, pay or let buildings crumble... the plagues had wiped out labor and craftsmen, alike, and the 'rabble' seized thier chance to improve their lot.
And all this continued until the early 1800's, until the year 1844, in fact. From the Iraqi-Mesopotamian clay tablets through the Egyptian and Chinese parchments and up to the 1800's NEWS, good or bad, traveled no faster than the speed of horse. Yes, there were single-purpose systems like the mountain-top signal-fires of the Koreans, but it's only message was 'The Huns are coming!'
Then, May 23, 1844, Samuel F.B.Morse initiated the Digital Age with his message, from the Old Testament (Numbers 23:23) that was publicly transmitted over miles, by using electricity (at almost the speed of light) to send whatever Words the sender wanted to share with the recipient. An auspicious start of The Digital Age, but we still had no idea of WordPress or its powerful contribution to the global conversation.
After telephone, radio, radio-telephone, TV and thousands of other devices and creations were brought into being and cable was stretched over millions of miles, we looked up one day and saw the Internet, the Interwebs, this collection of electronic 'pipes' that carried the water of life out to thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then hundreds of millions and today to billions of other humans, sharing The Word that we find in our minds and hearts, as we seek to claim our inheritance, because we are NOT kings, rulers or clergy, we are The Meek, and we have been promised our unheritance of the 'earth' of control over our own lives.
Enter WordPress, a software creation designed to pave the way and straighten the path for humans who want to share The Word with their fellow humans. Even in its first iteration, 1.0, WordPress was easier to install, easier to use and easier to tweak for individual wants and needs, than any of the other possible alternatives available in 2004. This, however, is a story unto itself and better documented elsewhere.
Today humankind finds itself recognizing that there is still a tiny minority of humans who consider themselves 'elite', who consider themselves 'above the rest' (of us) and feel they have the right and responsibility to govern We, the People, around the world even today. They are running thought patterns, Word-programs that contain basic flaws, flaws which doom them to failure in their quest for world domination... Why? because the Oneness of Humankind is a given, a scientific reality, based on observation, DNA, and the most recent revelation from That-Which-Created-Us.
It may seem like hyperbole to place WordPress on the same level, the same impact as Gutenbers's flat bed printing press, but see for yourself, because there are currently 74,652,825 sites around the world (give or take two or three) using -no, DEPENDING ON- WordPress... and that is no small, piddling number of users. Seventy-five MILLION Meek, non-noble people sharing their unique gifts with the world, each in their own unique way, by using the simplicity and power of WordPress.
And while we're on the subject of installing and tweaking, please recall what happened when SuperCalc led to Lotus 1-2-3... within months of Lotus' release for use on the 4.77MHz CPU computers of its day (that's slow, young readers, and made slower by needing floppy disks as RAM) it was twisted into functions that had never been foreseen or imagined by its creators... logical, functional and very real, practical uses, but astonishingly creative nevertheless.
This tweaking, this molding and reshaping and perverting and subverting is what happens when human meets opportunity, 'I see the power, so I want it to do THIS!' A little honing of the valves, adding a blower on the carburetors, fitting a better timing chain and PRESTO! A hot-rod of supreme coolth! In like manner, users pushed Lotus 1-2-3 into a database, data-entry fujnction; used macros to record keystrokes and automate complex operations and even show primitive movies or play games!
This human gift for modifying something good into something better cvame to a very positive expression in WordPress, in no small part due to its addition of one powerful ingredient: public access to the code, allowing tweakers with vision and some tech skills to create THIS or THAT and release their creation into the cyber space for free... or for profit, their choice.
Don't misunderstand, here, nothing is wrong with WordPress and it is BECAUSE of WordPress's core integrity and robust framework that so much personal customizing is possible. Essentially WP is solid, strong and flexible enough to withstand 'the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune' and still deliver quality, post after post, week after week, month after month and year after year.
So although we waited 6,000 years for the appearance of The Promised One of All Ages, His coming May 23, 1844 (yup, Digital Age Day) halfway around the world away from the Morse code display, He was only recognized by a few humans at first, and none of them were waiting for WordPress! They carried the good news in their hearts, their minds and their martyrdom.
Is it necessary to be martyred in 2016 for the growth of WordPress? Wow, I hope not! Just share the Good News for THIS Day with family, friends and acquaintances, time after time, on our WordPress blogs and store-fronts and resource-management systems... tweaked now into thousands and thousands of unique-on-the-outside/WP-engine-under-the-hood on the inside websites. It is an elegant, functional and solid system for sharing The Word with other humans, moving toward the inevitable world peace that will soon be apparent to all humans.
And what better than sharing positive, uplifting words, reports, trends and insights with our fellow humans? Isn't this 'changing the world'? Isn't this 'being what we want to become'?
Is this not a worthy gift to humanity?
The first records, way back when, were made by poking a V-shaped stick into damp slabs of clay, writing the message in wedge-form (cuneiform) and setting the clay out to bake in the sun. Since the human world was run by kings and priests back then, learning the sacred magic of clay-writing was a highly-prized job... among the priestly acolytes and would-be trainees...
Technical advances to recording The Word (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God) led to dyes (ink) on cleaned sheepskin (parchment) and the records expanded from the warehouse-deposit clay-bricks to encompass the dreams and visions of Seers, men who prayed, meditated and thought they were given a glimpse of humankind's future. Oh, and while we're here, our brains can be considered computing hardware and The Word is analogous to computing software. The Word is important because it serves as the opposable thumb to the fingers of the brain. You can grasp that, can't you?
Without software the brain is nearly useless... but by the same token, running Garbage software in even the best of brains can only result in Garbage outcomes... more on this later, now back to the long walk to 1844...
Centuries passed, with a slowly growing cadre of writers copying tomes by hand, laboring year after year in a labor of love that preserved the observations, opinions, visions and fears of a small number of men through the years... and a creative minority of women, not because women were less capable than men, but because men ran the world, and did not allow or encourage women to learn, grow... create!
Paper came into being and Gutenberg created his version of a moveable-type printing press less than 60 years after Koreans created THEIR moveable-type press... but Gutenberg's had much more impact than the efforts of The Hermit Kingdom... in this way Gutenberg's primitive press created Christian Bibles incredibly faster than the time needed to hand-write (and illuminate) similar books.
Handwriting and calligraphy grew and flourished in the hands of more and more people, but reading, writing and arithmetic were still restricted to the kingly caste and the local ecclesiastics... clergy. Yes, there was a growing middle class, especially after several plagues spread through Europe and wiped out 1/5th to 1/4th most populations... suddenly the 'peasants' could demand -and GET- decent wages for their labor, because the 'nobles' had little choice: Pay or let crops ROT, pay or let buildings crumble... the plagues had wiped out labor and craftsmen, alike, and the 'rabble' seized thier chance to improve their lot.
And all this continued until the early 1800's, until the year 1844, in fact. From the Iraqi-Mesopotamian clay tablets through the Egyptian and Chinese parchments and up to the 1800's NEWS, good or bad, traveled no faster than the speed of horse. Yes, there were single-purpose systems like the mountain-top signal-fires of the Koreans, but it's only message was 'The Huns are coming!'
Then, May 23, 1844, Samuel F.B.Morse initiated the Digital Age with his message, from the Old Testament (Numbers 23:23) that was publicly transmitted over miles, by using electricity (at almost the speed of light) to send whatever Words the sender wanted to share with the recipient. An auspicious start of The Digital Age, but we still had no idea of WordPress or its powerful contribution to the global conversation.
After telephone, radio, radio-telephone, TV and thousands of other devices and creations were brought into being and cable was stretched over millions of miles, we looked up one day and saw the Internet, the Interwebs, this collection of electronic 'pipes' that carried the water of life out to thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then hundreds of millions and today to billions of other humans, sharing The Word that we find in our minds and hearts, as we seek to claim our inheritance, because we are NOT kings, rulers or clergy, we are The Meek, and we have been promised our unheritance of the 'earth' of control over our own lives.
Enter WordPress, a software creation designed to pave the way and straighten the path for humans who want to share The Word with their fellow humans. Even in its first iteration, 1.0, WordPress was easier to install, easier to use and easier to tweak for individual wants and needs, than any of the other possible alternatives available in 2004. This, however, is a story unto itself and better documented elsewhere.
Today humankind finds itself recognizing that there is still a tiny minority of humans who consider themselves 'elite', who consider themselves 'above the rest' (of us) and feel they have the right and responsibility to govern We, the People, around the world even today. They are running thought patterns, Word-programs that contain basic flaws, flaws which doom them to failure in their quest for world domination... Why? because the Oneness of Humankind is a given, a scientific reality, based on observation, DNA, and the most recent revelation from That-Which-Created-Us.
It may seem like hyperbole to place WordPress on the same level, the same impact as Gutenbers's flat bed printing press, but see for yourself, because there are currently 74,652,825 sites around the world (give or take two or three) using -no, DEPENDING ON- WordPress... and that is no small, piddling number of users. Seventy-five MILLION Meek, non-noble people sharing their unique gifts with the world, each in their own unique way, by using the simplicity and power of WordPress.
And while we're on the subject of installing and tweaking, please recall what happened when SuperCalc led to Lotus 1-2-3... within months of Lotus' release for use on the 4.77MHz CPU computers of its day (that's slow, young readers, and made slower by needing floppy disks as RAM) it was twisted into functions that had never been foreseen or imagined by its creators... logical, functional and very real, practical uses, but astonishingly creative nevertheless.
This tweaking, this molding and reshaping and perverting and subverting is what happens when human meets opportunity, 'I see the power, so I want it to do THIS!' A little honing of the valves, adding a blower on the carburetors, fitting a better timing chain and PRESTO! A hot-rod of supreme coolth! In like manner, users pushed Lotus 1-2-3 into a database, data-entry fujnction; used macros to record keystrokes and automate complex operations and even show primitive movies or play games!
This human gift for modifying something good into something better cvame to a very positive expression in WordPress, in no small part due to its addition of one powerful ingredient: public access to the code, allowing tweakers with vision and some tech skills to create THIS or THAT and release their creation into the cyber space for free... or for profit, their choice.
Don't misunderstand, here, nothing is wrong with WordPress and it is BECAUSE of WordPress's core integrity and robust framework that so much personal customizing is possible. Essentially WP is solid, strong and flexible enough to withstand 'the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune' and still deliver quality, post after post, week after week, month after month and year after year.
So although we waited 6,000 years for the appearance of The Promised One of All Ages, His coming May 23, 1844 (yup, Digital Age Day) halfway around the world away from the Morse code display, He was only recognized by a few humans at first, and none of them were waiting for WordPress! They carried the good news in their hearts, their minds and their martyrdom.
Is it necessary to be martyred in 2016 for the growth of WordPress? Wow, I hope not! Just share the Good News for THIS Day with family, friends and acquaintances, time after time, on our WordPress blogs and store-fronts and resource-management systems... tweaked now into thousands and thousands of unique-on-the-outside/WP-engine-under-the-hood on the inside websites. It is an elegant, functional and solid system for sharing The Word with other humans, moving toward the inevitable world peace that will soon be apparent to all humans.
And what better than sharing positive, uplifting words, reports, trends and insights with our fellow humans? Isn't this 'changing the world'? Isn't this 'being what we want to become'?
Is this not a worthy gift to humanity?
posted by Karridine at 00:45
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