L.M.H.

In Boston, April 1905, the age of mechanical reproduction has just broken dawn. Meanwhile, L.M.H. is impatient to write to an unaddressed friend on the paper of a picture postcard of a place she or he has neither seen nor been. The handwriting on the card above states only: "I am a little ahead of myself as i will not see this for several weeks yet but never mind."

L.M.H. sat at a desk in Boston before going to the post office. Was he or she so certain to make it all the way to Palo Alto in 1905? Roads arent paved yet and there is no highway system with snack machines and mechanics at every exit. Furthermore he or she was one of the few people who gave up the chance to write in the small space alloted for messages, "wish you were here" or "having a great time." Instead its, "...but never mind." As if here was a man or woman who just wanted to get the tedious task of writing and sending a postcard out of the way so that he or she might quickly move on to enjoying one of the other new practices of modern life like a rare assam tea or an imported cigar. Perhaps L.M.H began, later in life, to get so fed up with the whole obligation of having to write postcards that on rainy days he happily mailed out four maybe five postcards from places he or she hadnt been but planned to go in the next five to ten years: "I am a little ahead of myself as i will not see this place for four score and seven years yet but never mind."

And little did our L.M.H know that the place he was going would one day be known as Silicon Valley and would invent the machinery necessary that would allow everyone to see anywhere they wanted without ever being there and, as it happens, not ever having to mind anything at all.