Browsing
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Until the mid 1990s people on the planet Earth with too much time on their hands read books, watched Australian soap operas, took long over-priced vacations, made cups of tea and generally wasted time in a multitude of different ways. In the mid 1990s a new discovery called the browser occurred. Very quickly many earth inhabitants found that browsing was a much better way of wasting time than they had ever had before, even better than the previously very popular Australian television programs.
Many employers made browsing available to their employees. Quickly everyone moved from companies that didn't allow browsing to companies that did. Universities also provided browsers and found that this was an excellent way of ensuring that they could heavily oversubscribe their classes since most students preferred browsing to attending lectures.
Some entrepreneurial types put together schemes to make money out of the hordes of people squandering their time browsing. In a vastly complex pyramid scheme involving options and banner ads many of these entrepreneurial types were able to derive vast fortunes by herding browsers between different places using what became known as portals. Very soon anything that previously made money or herded people between one place and another became known as a portal. Soon people had renamed and relaunched everything from websites, homepages, magazines and sheepdogs, as portals. In fact in late 1999 it became possible to hold a five minute conversation using just the word "portal" and doing so in certain circles would result in respect and admiration.
It is rumoured that in an area known as Silicon Valley in the late 20th and early 21st century if you were to walk into a restaurant and doodle on a napkin within minutes someone would rush over to your dining table and present you with a very large cheque.
In the mid 22nd Century Oophid Colpholbrot pointed out that was no real reason to give money to people who could herd browsers. Some questioned why it had taken so long to uncover this fraud but by this time most people were so addicted to browsing that they didn't take any notice and told Oophid to "shut up and get with it and stop wasting time when you could be browsing".
Many employers made browsing available to their employees. Quickly everyone moved from companies that didn't allow browsing to companies that did. Universities also provided browsers and found that this was an excellent way of ensuring that they could heavily oversubscribe their classes since most students preferred browsing to attending lectures.
Some entrepreneurial types put together schemes to make money out of the hordes of people squandering their time browsing. In a vastly complex pyramid scheme involving options and banner ads many of these entrepreneurial types were able to derive vast fortunes by herding browsers between different places using what became known as portals. Very soon anything that previously made money or herded people between one place and another became known as a portal. Soon people had renamed and relaunched everything from websites, homepages, magazines and sheepdogs, as portals. In fact in late 1999 it became possible to hold a five minute conversation using just the word "portal" and doing so in certain circles would result in respect and admiration.
It is rumoured that in an area known as Silicon Valley in the late 20th and early 21st century if you were to walk into a restaurant and doodle on a napkin within minutes someone would rush over to your dining table and present you with a very large cheque.
In the mid 22nd Century Oophid Colpholbrot pointed out that was no real reason to give money to people who could herd browsers. Some questioned why it had taken so long to uncover this fraud but by this time most people were so addicted to browsing that they didn't take any notice and told Oophid to "shut up and get with it and stop wasting time when you could be browsing".
