The Budget of Paradox

Sophia,
Technology has changed a lot in 25 years. When the internet first became popular, the coolest thing you could have is your own domain name. A domain, for example, is the “britney” in “www.britney.com”. Everything suddenly was a dot-com. If you’re curious, look up the history of nissan.com. Its ownership was the subject of an interesting and intense legal battle.

It’s easy to find some unregistered domain name that’s long and complex. The idea was to get a short, simple, memorable domain. But all the good domains were taken. And the coolest of the cool kids somehow managed to get one of their names as their domain name. I tried for a long time to get becker.com; a few friends of mine (with unusual names) own the dot-com version of their last name. Some companies paid millions to acquire the perfect domain name. For a long time, I owned threadfish.com. One year, I forgot to renew it and some Chinese company took it immediately.

When Morey was very young, I registered the domain morey.be and for a while, her e-mail address was morey@morey.be. This is back when domain names were exciting and e-mail was firmly established as the way to communicate online.

dreams and plans

Wow, it’s hard to predict the future. Little did anyone know that having a great dot-com would not only become irrelevant, but kids in the future wouldn’t even know what to do with one. Everything now is an “@” handle or a hashtag or a snapchat ID or a phone number. I had visions of Morey holding on to that e-mail address forever. Now, she doesn’t even use e-mail. And, of course, she’s not even Morey. Another dream set aside.

I have kept the domain name all these years. No point in renewing it now.

Dad
black.blue (no dot-com, it’s a dot-blue!)