As of this writing, it is the day before Valentine's Day. Newspapers are full of ads for candy, flowers, and lingerie; radio ads remind everyone to buy cards and make dinner reservations. The Internet, too, has its commercial sites attempting to make a profit on love. But there's another dimension: the host of these pages has created a special place for its citizens to declare their love in various ways. I've read some of the cards, poems, and love stories contained there. A surprising number concern romances which started on the net. From a middle-aged perspective, the accounts are not all that interesting. But I'm sure they are important to their authors.
What is it about love that makes people want to declare it in public? That same impulse fuels newspaper announcements or, at the extreme, a proposal of marriage via the electronic scoreboard at a sports event. Maybe such strong feelings demand to be shouted "from the highest hills" (as the song goes). The problem, however, is to ensure that among the hundreds or thousands of spectators, your message is noticed by that one special person. Newspapers are easy to arrange, folded artfully on the breakfast plate or office desk. But how does one fold a browser? I suppose a well-timed E-mail note with an embedded URL would do, although this method might diminish the element of surprise.
Digressing a bit, it seems that as the web expands there would be a need for two-way access: that is, a way to send web pages to recipients instead of waiting for a request. Mail and fax services work that way. Of course, there is the problem of unsolicited messages; multiple browser windows popping up at odd times would disrupt our routine even more than junk mail and faxes do now. And (returning to the subject) a declaration of love in an HTML file might be regarded as a supreme compliment by the sender, but harassment by the recipient. Then again, "the course of true love ne'er doth run smooth."
Personally, my wife and I have been married twenty years, and I love her even more now than when we were newlyweds. But the probability that she will access the net to read this article are almost nil. So I will declare my feelings to her in a traditional manner: a poem, written on paper and hand-delivered. Sometimes the old ways are still the best.