Julian Sanchez's musings on dead technology metaphors are a good read, but he's too quick to to dismiss the series of beeps and static bursts that the old modem handshake protocol made your lightning fast 14.4 kpbs was calling into the mothership. "Most people under about 25 wouldn’t have any reason to be familiar with that sound in real life," he says. Well, first, I'm 25, and I remember my modem dialing in for that sound. But I'm a nerd, and was using Mosaic to hunt down leaked Mortal Kombat pictures fairly early. More importantly, that sound will live on until businesses give up their fax lines, and the rest of us stop accidentally dialing them. The two protocols are aurally indistinguishable, at least to me, and the latter still pops up fairly frequently when I accidentally read the wrong number of a company's web site. So, for now, the static and beeps live on, I think. Related: What if the show "24" took place in 1994?
