Remarkable discovery
Feb. 20th, 2010 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatEveryone knows that Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet, right? Wrong! I have uncovered amazing evidence that the internet is far older than the anyone has hitherto suspected. Last night, I was listening to a CD of American folk songs from the Civil War era, and on came the song Goober Peas. The last two lines were very clearly thus:
"I wish the war was over, so free from rags and fleas
We'd kiss our wives and sweethearts, and Google goober peas."
So amazed was I at this revelation that I listened to the song again, and there was no doubt at all about it: he was singing about Googling goober peas. The internet was clearly alive and well in the 1860s. Of course, in the chaos of war and its aftermath, this knowledge was clearly lost. In this war, not even the bard escaped the tell the story and pass on the technical specs, and it would be over a century before we rediscovered this particular art.
It also adds a new dimension to Civil War studies. On another occasion, listening to the CD, I remarked, tongue in cheek, "Perhaps the South would have won the war had they not spent the time writing quite so many songs." Maybe what I should have said was, "Perhaps the South would have won had their soldiers spent less time online."
"I wish the war was over, so free from rags and fleas
We'd kiss our wives and sweethearts, and Google goober peas."
So amazed was I at this revelation that I listened to the song again, and there was no doubt at all about it: he was singing about Googling goober peas. The internet was clearly alive and well in the 1860s. Of course, in the chaos of war and its aftermath, this knowledge was clearly lost. In this war, not even the bard escaped the tell the story and pass on the technical specs, and it would be over a century before we rediscovered this particular art.
It also adds a new dimension to Civil War studies. On another occasion, listening to the CD, I remarked, tongue in cheek, "Perhaps the South would have won the war had they not spent the time writing quite so many songs." Maybe what I should have said was, "Perhaps the South would have won had their soldiers spent less time online."
