Wired Magazine cover story says it was Marc Andreessen who discovered the browser but I say it was future Mayor of Palo Alto Peter Drekmeier in 1976.

Peter tells the story of catching a gopher snake and putting it in a cage. Then he bought a mouse to feed to the snake. But the snake would not crawl out from beneath the rock to eat the mouse. Then Peter updated his business plan and figured there was a greater future in the mouse (like a browser, more social) than the snake (like a router, and not actually that much fun) and dropped the snake and renamed the mouse Marcel Mouse (or Marcel Mouse-so, like Marcel Marceau the Mime) and kept if for a very long time, and later became Mayor of Palo Alto.

Drekmeier revealed all this yesterday to PAHA at a book launch, and I said it would take me a minute to find the parable and spin the story properly.

Speaking of “story”, I walked past, not thirty minutes ago, time being of the essence if not of infinite speed, as technology wants to or software wants to, as if it were a being, like a corporation or an android or a person a people, of this agreement, we capitalists and linguistically-conscious apes, past a store front I mean an office space, a non-descript office space,at 777 B something here downtown, and noticed a banner, not quite a shingle. It said Clear Story, which was enough to lure me in to this place of work, who are the next Facebook or Twitter or Loudcloud or something.

There were three young guys there. One said “which one of us is ‘Security’?” The other said “May I help you”. He pointed a funny looking not-quite-a-gun at me which told him my fastball was only 35 miles per hour, I was wearing Banana Republic tighty-whities and that my cellphone was stupid.

“Hello, Mark Weiss, 1788 Oak Creek Drive, 94304, whassup?”

I asked him if he knew that his new start-up shared a name with one of my favorite pieces of public art, Clear Story, by Mildred Howard which is on loan here for about a year, in front of City Hall.

He said that he noticed that on the search engines when designing the banner (the “shingle”) but that otherwise he was not associated with Mildred Howard nor did his venture have enough backing to further publicize the total coincidence or to sponsor our Clear Story.

I wished him luck with Clear Story II, was not offered to read a prospectus and went about my business. I did not accept a fee to tell this Clear Story.

Which reminds me of the time I walked in on David Choe and Mark Zuckerberg, above Jing Jings and paid $20 for a Choe calendar, thus ensuring that Choe had cab fare home and he took the $200 million stock option on FB rather than the $10,000 in hand. You’re welcome, David. Any time. No worries.

My only observation about Andreessen and Wired, if anybody is still reading, is that earlier in the book they quote Paul Saffo, formerly of IFTF, but more recently of something called TK, that he looks for contradictions as a sign of something about to happen, and in Andreessen’s case I note that he married a real estate heiress rather than say the founder of 23 and Me biotech, or her sister. What could it mean? I also recall getting a chuckle that New York Times wrote that Andreessen will make $100 million on an early investment in Instagram (back when it did something else, see The Snake and The Mouse parable above,  aka “Clearer Story About The Mouse“) but not $200 million because he later invested in a competitor in the same space and his shares got sort of diluted.

I am writing this from the library because I am still in the naysayer camp about all this high tech stuff and refuse to join FB or buy a computer.

Here are a couple shots of Clear Story, and Clear Story II.

Fee free (although you are actually under surveillance) to add this to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing) splitting the difference between mouse and browser which is the literary equivalent of putting fish genes in a tomato; work with me.

edit to add: this is a bit off topic, but as far as my  Harbaugh monologue Peter Drekmeier yesterday, after his mouse-snake speech, told me that he was the year behind Jim at Paly, played football and actually thought Harbaugh was very inclusive of even the least-likely of his teammates, duly noted.

edit to add, about five minutes later: coincidentally or not, Clear Story II is actually a five-person company, has a female-founder and is backed by this same Andreessen fellow, according to Times.’

edit to add, again: it’s more about challenging the official story of anything or anybody, but I would probably enjoy, as would my readers (both of you), reading and writing about the teachings and doings of Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, for example this. Also, I am subtly riffing off of, and trying to digest, like a snake swallowing a Frenchman, the Wired story about Stanford grad and rapper Daniel Lee. And I am channeling early Randy Newman, if that explains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjylMngn_c