And if minutes equal weeks, years are absolute epochs. But time's up. The halcyon days of the mid-'90s, when every new dawn beamed with brighter Dayglo colors than the one before, are fading.
Marvels are in sudden short supply.
In 1997, the year of living slowly, cyberspace speeders have hit a bumpy road. VRML viewers offered a three-dimensional interface to our flat monitor screens. Gif animations added life to static documents. Java promised interactivity for everyone. No one cared if sound quality sucked, or the VRML plug-in was buggy beyond belief, or every Java applet seemed to crash.