If you started college in the 90s then you surely remember the old UNIX email accounts the university gave you. You'd login to your server with telnet and use pine to check your email, and it was all text-based. If you were also part of a tiny secret society, you also dutifully updated your '.plan' file. The '.plan' file was a text file in your main directory where you'd add a personal message and maybe even a message for a few of your friends. You'd also check your friends' '.plan' files with the 'finger' command. For instance, my email address was ingale@students.uiuc.edu, so another person could potentially read my '.plan' file by typing 'finger ingale'. (You can read more about the '.plan' file here.) A sample '.plan' file might look like this:

Man, what a crazy weekend. At least the Redskins won on Sunday! jkorb: Thanks for the email. I'll check it out! klong: I know! I have no idea what he was thinking. Someone's got a lot of explaining to do.

Aside from the obvious jokes about fingering each other, the '.plan' files also let us keep in touch and meet new people. I could see a new person's email address referenced in a '.plan' file and start reading their '.plan' file too. By my last year of grad school, the dream was all but over. The University removed the old UNIX accounts and switched everybody over to a webmail system, and we could no longer check each other's '.plan' files. But a new hope emerged. In the summer of 2004, I created my facebook account. Back then it was limited solely to connect with people at your own university. Eventually it expanded so that I could connect with people from other universities and ultimately, with anybody who created an account. A few years later Facebook added the ability to update one's status and let others comment on it. Suddenly, the '.plan' culture from years ago and alive and stronger than ever.