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It is interesting to me how different scientific
generalizations look when they are given historical context. Was Adam, the first
man in the Bible, a hunter/gatherer? The Paiute Indians inhabiting
Southern Utah when my great-great grandfather, Bengt Nelson immigrated to Cedar
City from Malmo, Sweden in 1857 were. Jesus Christ lived in the agricultural era. So did
my great grandfather, Bengt Nelson, Jr., and my grandfather, Roice Bengt Nelson,
as they farmed in Cedar Valley. Henry Thoreau and Albert Einstein were both
participants in the industrial age? So was my father, Howard Roice Nelson, Sr.,
and myself, as we worked in Nelson Meat Packing Plant, and as I used a machine
to punch out thousands of hamburger patties for Fourth of July celebrations
across Southern Utah. Pope John Paul, II and Gordon B. Hinckley, the most
widely traveled religious leaders in the history of the world, live in the
information age. So do you and I, and - if and when we are blessed to have
them - our children and grandchildren.
I started using the Internet in 1988, with a direct
connection from Landmark Graphic's office in West Houston to Rice University,
the local Internet Hub. Years before this, working for Amoco the summer of 1973,
I used a teletype machine connected to a company mainframe computer in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, to calculate seismic source and receiver array response curves for
a "marine" seismic survey being planned for the Great Salt Lake. In 1981, I
wrote my first book, "New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics," mostly from
our house in Missouri City, using a terminal connected to the University of
Houston's Seismic Acoustics Laboratory's DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)
VAX computer by modem. In 1993 we put a T3 (45 thousand bits per second)
Internet connection into HyperMedia Corporation's offices at 11767 Katy Freeway
in Houston. With a web server in my study since 1994, and a 192 thousand bits
per second DSL connection (Digital Subscriber Line) since 1997 (which can be
instantly upgraded to 1.5 million bits per second for an additional fee), I
have access to more data, information, knowledge, and even wisdomP8 than has
ever been possible before for anyone in the history of the world. This is a
feat impossible for anyone with my relative financial resources in any
generation prior to ours.
And how does society use the Internet, this
wonderful scientific and faith based context? Typically to promulgate agenda,
distraction, fear, fiction, greed, opinion, pseudo-science, and tradition. It
often appears the largest users of the Internet are the "spammers" and those
addicted to pornography, in it's various insidious forms. So what does all
of this have to do with you, the reader, and with me, the author? We have
the opportunity to open our minds, to find context, and then to share what we
find in order to make a positive difference within our individual worlds of
influence.
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paradoxes