Red Clay Roads and Internet Wires

Seven years ago I posted the text of a talk I gave 25 years ago in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Adventures on the Information Red Clay Road: Getting Wired Cheap. I was able to do this because my friend Art Rhyno had kept a copy of the text and sent it to me.

At the time I didn’t have the slides that I used to accompany the talk–this was 1994, before Powerpoint and Keynote, so we used slide projectors for our “decks”–and so I could only post the text.

But a lucky bit of slide scanning yesterday produced the slides I’d used all those years ago, and so, with those slides scanned, I was able to update the post with the images that were projected while I spoke.

My favourite part of the talk–and the part that the images best help to illustrate–was a series of slides showing the route our leased copper connection to the Internet took from my office in the PEI Crafts Council on Richmond Street, into the basement, out the back of the building, along to Sydney Street, and up Queen Street to Island Tel and the Internet.

As I wrote in 2012, “It seems as though every decade or so I’m destined to revisit a talk I gave…” I’m 3 years early this time around. Perhaps someone will unearth the audio for the 2022 update?