I note a personal anniversary. It is 20 years since I found out where my computer keyboard's @ was hidden.
In 1996, no sane punter knew their @ key. It was as useless as the #. @ wasted keyboard space. The only humans who tapped the @ were accounts clerks invoicing other clerks for 20 gross of widgets @ $7 per wodge.
But that was then. Today, in 2016, we could make a fairish case for @ being declared the 27th letter of the alphabet.
The astute Wit's End Sherlock Holmes, having digested this information, will put down her violin, puff her meerschaum, and tell Dr Watson: ‘‘We may surmise much from the writer's @ discovery:
''Exactly two decades ago this chap sat down - probably on a brown office chair parked in front of a grey IBM desktop - and, fingers trembling, typed his first email,'' Holmes explained.
''A maiden email, Sherlock? Why so, old fruit?''
''Elementary, my dear. Before email, mankind had no use for the @ key. Then one of email's inventors - a fellow called Tomlinson - decreed emails should be addressed in the style ‘someone@somewhere'. The @ key now had a purpose.
''But Watson, there's more,'' Holmes added. ‘‘Those were old and primitive times. In 1996, only one in 10 Westerners had the internet.''
''Poor beggars. You mean they didn't have chat rooms or pornography?''
''No Watson, I mean this Wit's End fellow is among the 13.5% of homo sapiens who fit Professor Everett Rogers' ‘Early Adopter' profile.
''Early Adopters are first aboard with new trends. So our suspect is a techno nerd. He'll have the latest iPhone, a row of ballpoints in his shirt pocket, and bad teeth.''
Well, the bloodhound of Baker Street was right to link the @ key with my email debut, but wrong about the rest. I am not an early adopter - rather, I am a protesting foot-dragger who plods near the back of the cyberpack.
Consider Microsoft. For months they've have been at me to upgrade to their Windows 10. Now they snottily tell me that 100 million others have pushed their ‘‘install'' button. So - by implication - ‘‘Why haven't you, you illiterate, cranially empty peasant?''
86.5% of you other peasants know my reasons. You also failed the entrance exam to the 13.5% Club. You, too, know their clever new software will stuff up how you do things. That it's written to their logic, not ours. It's as if these techno-tyrants demand we go on a diet so we can fit into THEIR pants. The cheek of it.
This lemming will leap screaming over the Windows 10 cliff only when he's forced to. And while I'm on about all this, I admit that back in 1996 that first email was sent because I had no choice.
I was panting to make a largish sale to a multinational, but their top dogs required we dispatch yards of bumf to several cities. We sent this off by fax - still one of the new marvels - and were quickly told to cease choking up their bloody facsimile machines. They'd just adopted this new thing called email, so Bugalugs must too.
We'd employed a couple of Laurel and Hardy computer types. One was a grave and very fat man who looked like a cream bun bursting from a shirt, and the other, a skinny child with a Mohawk, who dwelt between his earphones.
Stan and Oliver bumbled about and found me an early version of Outlook email. They supervised as I keyed in my first message, and showed me the Send button.
Boing! It rocketed off on a space odyssey meant to take if from Sydney to Brussels. But did it really? The techo pair insisted it had, but I wanted proof of the miracle. Why couldn't they phone and check it had jumped out the other end?
They wouldn't. I mooched about for a day, and then, astonishingly, received a reply that was also flashed to bigwigs in Hong Kong, London, and Omaha. Eureka!
We cyber-haggled back and forth for several weeks, and then pulled off our best ever deal - international, and pushed over the line via this new email thingy.
The email and the @ key. It was clear the world had changed. So why do we still await the better mousetrap?
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
