MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

It comes from a book by Lewis Hyde called Trickster Makes This World. "aflakete" is Yoruba for the trickster--what others might call Mercury (astrology), coyote (Native American) or Legba (Haiti). This seemed appropriate for the Net, as it includes the idea of communications, roads, travel and the elusive or unaccounted for in general.

As for my interest in the Net, I felt the same way J.G.Ballard did:

"What I hope the computer and TV Revolution will bring about is a scientific information channel where you can just push a button and. . . . I want a much higher throughput of information in my life than I can get my hands on--I want to know everything about everything![. . .] access is the great problem."

--From the Re/Search interview in their Ballard issue. (interview from 10/29/82)

Careful what you wish for. . .