1876
When you ask for a story, do you mean about the battle with Indians at Powder River? William took shot from a Springfield Trapdoor by the whiskeydrunk Sargeant and later healed crooked and two inches shorter in one appendage. That story is over a hundred years old and only an old tintype in sepia remains to prove it. The bison, the Indians, the homing pigeon, those stories aren’t lost, just ignored. Boring.
The thrill of the internet age is the same thrill of every revolution: putting power in the hands of the individual. My first personal computer, and the start of my personal revolution, began in 1998. I bought it brand new because I didn’t know what I needed and took a salesman’s advice. How’s that for independence? Every step of the way I had to hire and pay to use it. Modems, ISP, a printer, a website, a programmer, a designer, it was a team of tech support from here to India and thousands of dollars for “extras” just to get a sniff of what the promise was: independence and freedom to create and explore.
The moral? Becoming digital did not help me tell my stories.