The History of Where It’s @
No one really knows how it first started out,
that thing called the snail by Italians,
little monkey tail by the Dutch, the sine qua
non of Internet communication whose obscurity
ended in ‘71 when a techie teleyped a
message to himself in Cambridge Mass using
the graceful curlicue on top of the two. With
that message @ became where it’s at
for electronically connecting to humans or
facsimiles thereof and hallelujah, no more phone
conversations or getting together with
mundane mortals which means breakups can be
done via Facebook and Twitter, your pain can be
posted on Instagram, anguish can be
blogged, you and your ex can be alone together
with righteous illusions of who was to blame,
how things should have been.
© Martin H. Levinson
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