All the voices on all the websites in all the world seem to merge together into an ambient buzz, a continuous background hum like in an airliner's cabin during flight or in a New York hotel room with a window open. Individual voices rise up from different directions, like the grinding motor raising the flaps after takeoff or the claxon of an emergency vehicle passing by below, but always, underneath, the hum of innumerable voices stretching off beyond the horizon.
Those of us who build the internet know there is another, deeper, layer. We hear the cosmic background radiation of the internet, a signal emerging from data centers, server rooms, and network closets across the world that blends the hiss of cooling fans with the rumble of heavy duty air conditioning. Tiny lights next to RJ-45 jacks mark the imperceptibly rapid beat of the GET's and POST's travelling over that carrier wave.
Our domain within the internet has many voices. We carry on myriad meta-conversations, discussions about the machinery of communication--and about the ways to build and run the machinery. Rising version numbers, bugs, and new paradigms draw noisy crowds the coalesce and melt away toward the next event. Factions have leaders, fads have gurus, innovations have evangelists. The receiving line for information technology subject matter experts stretches out the front door, down the block, and into the next time zone.
This website is but one voice, and a hatchling at that.
It will grow, fly, travel far, and see many strange and wonderous things. We hope you will join us on that journey.