The Mayflower Compaq

If science has a Thomas Pynchon, it's Russel Seitz, who usually blogs at Adamant. Once a week he shows up here to drop some knowledge.

...Ye Pilgrim Bloggers First Thanksgiving

"a recently unearthed  Compaq desktop PC offers a tantalizing glimpse into the day-to-day life of a primitive Internet society, said archaeologists --The Onion  "

...HEREIN , PILGRIM,  ADAMANT  REVEALETH  HOW THIS INFERNAL ENGINE OR MACHINE BROUGHT BLOGGING HITHER  IV CENTURIES AGO  Since the year of our Lord 1620 we in New England hath looked for our Hiftory of Technology  lessons to The Puritan Broadcafting System. Yet the Godless minions of Antiques Road Show recently defcribed a Gadget delivered to The Bay Colony in 1638 as ye nations "firft printing press."

This is arrant knavery --any mechanical Philosopher knoweth this infernal Machine to be forsooth a PC peripheral, for  Blogging , like bundling, is among the First Fruits Of New England. Did not Nathaniel Hawthorne  of Salem complain that Mifstress Hester Prynne's lap-top was busy even before the Pilgrim  Fathers landed?  So heere be set forth 
.......                .YE MAYFLOWER COMPAQ: a Ufers Manual.

Blogging was begat by the software revolution instaurated by the Commonwealth's Lord Protector, who develop'd that happy Instrument of New England's preservation
Ye Cromwell Disc Drive  

Ere the Founders of the Bay Colony  set foot on Plymouth Rock, they esteem'd blogging a duty to God. What school-childe knowes not of the earliest American PC , The Mayflower Compaq ?

In the Year of our Lord 1638  the Compaq's New Model Operating Syftem brought forth the first Print-Out evidencing the Pilgrim's Progress . The Freeman's Oath, which made voting conditional on church attendance. This was necessitate  by the  dense forest Primeval, whose ruinous effect on Wi Fi reception  made it impossible to upload the sermons on which the Colonists state of Grace depended. Therefore  ye Pilgrims had to be sat down each Sabbath to be read to aloud for some  hours before lunch, the afternoon being reserved for accusing  neighbors of witchcraft and  disputing whether damnation be best obtain'd by faith,or good works.

Calvinist content-providing burgeoned  with Harvard's foundation, and clergymen soon feared sermon piracy. Hence they sent to England for the latest in hard-copy server technology , a mighty oaken maine-frame denominated the Ingeniose Blackletter Matrix CCCLX. The sight of these heathenish Numerals alarm'd the Lord's Elect, many fearing it might  copy their e-mails to the Pope of Rome. To restore Comity the CCCLX was rechristened Ye IBM 360.   

It embodied the e-mail hopes of ye Viking ubergeeks who proceedeth ye Pilgrims --’ Vinland’ is but a mifprint for 'Black-Berry Land' -- , for the ingeniose Engine could send forth Deerskin Velum Dispatches, now known as DVD's   fast as venison could be skinned for parchment.

Wi Fi Reform'd by ye Pilgrim Bloggers  
Finding readers  was another matter, for Harvard could obtain few undergraduates able to parse English or Linux upon entering college, or read Latin and Greek on leaving it, a problem which plagues our nation to this day. The dearth of literate offspring drove the Puritans to lend the  bulky Matrix to Salem for use as a witch-press, and to consider of  outsourcing data entry to the Indians, but so slow was communication betwixt  Boston and Bangalore in Baroque times that Native Americans were  recruited in their stead.

This proved disastrous. Though ye breech-clouted savages familiarity  with smoke-signals  made  them adept at mastering internet protocols. no sooner had they sampled Puritan cooking than they dropped their tomahawks and ran gibbering into the woods. There they founded Dartmouth College, and realizing Puritan fears of IP theft, developed a lucrative trade in Algonquin Bibles, Anabaptist pornography and Quaker self-help manuals.

Governor Winthrop's diftribution of virus infected blanket soft-ware to the Indians limited these Enormities until Anno 1729, when the Unitarian Renegado Elihu Yale converted a Pequot Sachem's wigwam into a diploma mill issuing Doctorates of Divinity emblazon'd Linux Et Veritas 

Soon Yale's pernicious homilies were common as loaded dice in an Indian Casino by the shores of Gitche Gumee, and  birch-bark upon which to print Refutations ran short, so the reverend Cotton Mather took up paper making, selling his Surplus to the sot-weed factors of  Virginia to roll Cigarettoes. Thif led to a Plague of other Enormities, as Anglicans and Dutch Reformed Dominies in New Amsterdam dispatched their minion John Appleseed to spread the Vice of Cyder-drinking westward. Within a generation there was an ultramontane Population much in need of sermonizing, so Fear-God Gates, rusticated from Harvard for possession of playing cards, and Increase Jobs, another apple enthusiast, emigrated West to propagate the Word. 

                                        Programming Ye CCCLX Main-Frame:

                              Goodbody Gates  & the Reverend Jobs Lock'd in Disputation

                                   at the Puritan Dual -Processers Synod of 1679

Providence smiled on their Zeal. From Jobs'  orchards the MacIntosh arose  and from Gate's Yankee ingenuity a Great Awakening of the right to self-publish sermons on all subjects civil and moral, Areopagitically, as Milton intended, without the least fear of editing. They knew not what they did, and today in every shining City on a Hill ,the Lord's Elect call down the Wrath of almighty Providence upon them

For though once the Mayflower Compaq  provided  only one blog per Colony, now they are ground out faster than counterfeit Wampum, and  bloggerel  unending overfloweth our inboxes even upon the Sabbath morn.  If the Lord were but to grant New England a good deliverance from this fearsome Engine of preterition, it would be cause for a Day of Thanksgiving.