September 20, 2016:
Steve Smug, network tech, jellybelly bouncing beneath polyester golf shirt, beams with pleasure over his own hipness. "I'm going to the Greek on Friday. Hootie and the Blowfish and Toad the Wet Sprocket. How's that for a bill?" By which he means to convey, I may be forty but I'm keeping up.
Except, he's not. Later he offers paternal advice. "Give up that IP hobby, kid. NetWare's 70% of the market. You're wasting your time with this esoteric Internet dohick."
Of course, he doesn't use the word "esoteric". It's unlikely he knows that word. One of many lacunae pointing to his life to come. Because the future is written, the sky is falling, and it's all happening in profoundly plain sight. Except Steve Smug has his cool shades on indoors. In a year he resigns when I'm made his boss. Five years later he's still making $42k/annual in university backwaters while I'm designing commercial software at Internet scale for six times that.
Fast forward. The same sky is today about to crush everyone in his field. Every last one. They've been obsolete for a decade. The C-levels are beginning to understand and when their number reaches critical mass there'll be no more IT. There'll be specialized data-center crews working for the mega players. The others will go the way of Hootie and Toad and Steve: blips for a minute.