In the summer of 1988 I spent six weeks of a DC summer in the Department of Commerce as an intern at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a small politically sidelined government bureaucracy of less than no importance or influence in 1988.

It amuses me to recall that I was interested in the "world changing" potential of telecommunications technology. In that interest perhaps I was prefiguring my current work on the web. But - hello! - this was not the place to change the world! Has a man less suited to work in the U.S. Department of Commerce ever walked this earth? If you find one, let me know. In the meantime, I win!

In 2003 I would explain that Department of Commerce internship as a symbol of how far I was from self knowledge, or from world knowledge, or perhaps just from an understanding of how the self that I was could fit into the world as it was.

I lived that summer with my aunt Shula Hochstein and my uncle Bob Hochstein.

It was probably at the end of 1988 or shortly thereafter that I completed my Masters degree in International Relations.