I like to listen to classic rock on the radio: the good stuff from the 1950s through the 1970s (i.e., Bill Haley, Rock Around the Clock through The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers). One day, Elvis' Return to Sender: Address Unknown came on. It jarred me: who sends letter mail anymore? It also resonated, because an email had just come bouncing back, marked “User Unknown”. The juxtaposition flashed an “A Ha” at me, leading me to realize how much our technology and social relations have changed subtly in the past 30 years. And not just technology has changed songs: Run Around Sue from the 1950s has now become a dreaded HIV Superconnector.

So I decided to translate song titles into contemporary cyber times. But why stop at songs? The more I thought about this, the more I realized how much things had changed while we were getting on with our lives. Movies, TV, pop culture, history, places, politics, love, cars, etc. joined the list. Most are modern updatings, such as Isetta/Smart Car. However, some are just for fun, as in Godzilla/Mozilla and The Check is in the Mail/The Czech is in the Mall – noting the coming of capitalism to eastern Europe.

Technology is an obvious example of change. For example, where before we used big antennas to get radio stations 100 miles away, we now use SHOUTcast.com and other internet services to listen around the world. The Great Firewall of China, filtering out anti-regime websites, has replaced the Great Wall of China. Where cowboys used to follow the Chisholm Trail, web users now follow a Breadcrumb Trail linking sites. Blackberry Cases have replaced Slide Rule Holsters. Where I (and Tommy) played Pinball in the 1950s, today’s generation plays with the Xbox.

The old and new parallels are not limited to technology. Take places, movie starlets used to get discovered at Schwab’s Drug Store in Los Angeles; now Silicon Valley denizens meet at Il Fornello in Palo Alto. Communities are no longer in neighborhoods: some are online as in MySpace. Yet, some things have stayed much the same: Fraudulent president vote counts in 1960 and 2000; American Idol is but a nastier version of Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. Smoke rarely Gets in Your Eyes in North American restaurants or offices, with smokers constrained to stand 50 Feet from the Front Door. Debates about Iraqi policy echo ancient Athenian Melian and Syracusian Debates. Bin-Laden’s We Will Destroy the Crusader West has replaced Khrushchev’s We Will Bury You. For coupling, Ten Cents a Dance has inflated to Forty Dollars a Lap Dance, transitory Hook-Ups have replaced Going Steady, and Guys and Guys is now an alternative to Guys and Dolls.

Yet the search for parallels suggests major changes. Few have the patience to wait for Mr. Sandman when they can fall asleep more quickly with Ambien. Pearl Buck’s celebration of Chinese peasantry, The Good Earth, has been superseded by the mega-skyscrapers of Pudong, Shanghai. Wikipedia is a major advance in scope on the Encyclopedia Britannica; less so in validity. When it comes to politics and surveillance: where US Secretary of War Henry Stimson said in 1929 that “Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail,” the US National Security Agency (NSA) now asserts the right and the ability to read email and phone calls – while postal mail has become irrelevantly obsolete.

I’ve ordered and grouped items loosely, with only main headings: just what seems to flow together. I’ve deliberately made items terse; Google them if you need more information. New items are added frequently.

I welcome your contributions. Please send your entries to wellman@chass.utoronto.ca with the subject line 'CyberTimes'. Let me know if you want to be publicly credited for your contribution, if you’d rather be anonymous, or if you’d prefer to use a pseudonym. To avoid clutter, I have left my name off of my own entries.

Feel free to contribute items from pre-Internet years, even from before the 1950s – such as Bell Boy / GSM Pager). Warning: this can become addictive – do not attempt while trying to meet deadlines.

Thanks to Sandra Wong for web implementation. © Barry Wellman 2006