David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Eight years ago–almost to the day–I was fea­tured in a New York Times arti­cle about using 3-D envi­ron­ments in online classes. Even had my ugly mug pho­tographed by Brownie Har­ris, the man who took the famous pic­ture of JFK, Jr. Some time, I’ll tell you what it’s like get­ting your pic­ture taken in com­plete dark­ness while hold­ing your breath. Only time in my life I felt sym­pa­thy for super models.

This was way before Sec­ond Life even had a first life, and although I still have crum­bling copy of the paper that I pull out of the fil­ing cab­i­net one in a blue moon, I never had access to the online arti­cle because the NYT had a pol­icy for lock­ing its archives. That pol­icy changed a while ago. The NYT now makes its archives search­able and linkable.

So if you or your loved ones have appeared in the Times since 1851, you can find the arti­cle. And if you want to read an eight year old arti­cle about a small town pro­fes­sor play­ing with avatars in a cyber class­room you can.  Hap­pily, the Brownie Har­ris’ photo of me is not available.