In the early nineties, when I worked at Eliot, Joe H____ asked, “Do you want to see the World Wide Web?”
“The what?”
“The web. I’ll send you an email that shows how to open it.”
He sent instructions on how to see the Trojan Room Coffee pot.
I wrote back, “I don’t get it. Why can’t they just make more coffee when they get there?”
Luckily, Joe did not give up on bringing the Internet to Eliot, and a few weeks later he tried again. I was there, and so was Martha, a forty five year old (OLD!) elegant lady who was only working to keep herself entertained.
Joe was explaining that the web wasn’t just all about coffee pots; there were books on there too. “You can read books on the screen. What book would you like to read?”
We rolled our eyes at the idea at reading a book on screen, but Joe seemed to really think this web thing had merit. Martha said, “show me Pride and Prejudice.”
He brought up Pride and Prejudice, and indeed it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
“Yup, that’s Pride and Prejudice,” we said. “We have this book at home.” Why wouldn’t people just read the copy of Pride and Prejudice they have at home? Seriously.
I asked, “Why is Mr. Bennet’s name in blue?”
Joe said, “That means it’s a link. You can click it and read more.” Which we did. There was Mr. Bennet’s estate (£2,000 a year) and a link to every time Mr. Bennet is mentioned in Pride and Prejudice. Then we yelled at Joe for wasting our time on coffee pots when there was this amazing thing out there.
I mention this old story because Joe later went on to companies other than Eliot, but starting next Wednesday he’ll be sitting a few cubes away from me at TeddyJ.