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Network Configuration

Title text: If you repeatedly rerun the development of technological civilization, it turns out that for some reason the only constant is that there is always a networking utility called 'netcat', though it does a different thing in each one.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a NETCAT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

When you're having performance problems with your computer network, a common solution is to replace component equipment with newer or higher quality devices, and/or update network settings (e.g. firewall options) to reduce overhead. This is collectively called rebuilding the network configuration.

Cueball has apparently taken this to extreme, reconstructing the entire history of human civilization and technology that has led to the development of computer networks. As this originally took multiple millenia, doing it for every network packet would make communication extremely slow; in modern networking, we send and receive thousands of packets every second.

Another way to interpret this is in the context of strategy video games. Ponytail is complaining about a laggy connection that is affecting their ability to play the game with each other. In strategy video games there is often a tree of technology that needs to be developed with considerable time and resources. Cueball in the last frame looks shaggy and has equipment behind him as though he had been performing these tasks in real life just to get his network working again.

The network packet in the last panel was stuck to the Neolithic era, the final period of the Stone Age that marked the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. Apparently Cueball had to go through the effort to introduce farming, one of the developments of the Neolithic Revolution, to keep communicating with Ponytail.

This is perhaps a subtle reminder for people complaining about technology not working quite as well as they'd like. Just ten years ago, the kind of internet speeds we have today would be completely unthinkable; now, we are so used to this luxury that we take it for granted. (For similar thoughts, see also everything is amazing and nobody is happy interview with Louis CK.)

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Ponytail is at her computer with a headset on. A zigzag line indicates what is shown on the computer screen]

Ponytail (typing): Ugh, your connection is so laggy.

Computer: Yeah, sorry.

[Cueball is at his laptop]

Cueball (typing): It's because I messed up my network configuration and now I have to rebuild a separate civilization from scratch for each packet.

Ponytail (typing): Huh?

Ponytail (typing): What are you talking about?

Ponytail (typing): ...Hello?

[Beat panel]

[Cueball, with dirt on his head and around him, is at an old computer setup with an agricultural tool resting on his now non-office chair]

Cueball (typing): Sorry, got stuck in the Neolithic that time.

Cueball (typing): Inventing farming takes forever.

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