Stop Right Now, and Thank Charles Babbage

When I'm desperate for content for this little rag, I tend to waste time, and I tend to waste it most predominantly in looking through file after file of old crap, finding something I can recycle for an article. Hence, the following, which is the first column I ever published in college. It's an interesting snapshot of me, six years ago, and it's an interesting portrait of one man's first encounter with the Internet, in the earliest days of the web. More than that, though, this article's great because it's done, and I don't have to write it.

I think I put the "weak" into New Student Week. And I have Charles Babbage to thank for it.

Babbage is the man credited with constructing the first modern computer sometime in the 1850's. His rooms full of vacuum tubes, wires, peat moss, and whatever else they used to build those old things would eventually become over time, work, and certainly some form of voodoo magic, the instrument of my descent into a Danteesque electronic Inferno: the Internet.

Entering this den of technological temptation is simple enough: if you live in a dorm as I do, simply jam a cord into the Internet hole in the wall. (Not any cord, like an electric cord or twine rope; a specific type of cord is needed, but you get the picture.) Then load the programs, get the drivers from your Resident Network Consultant (or Boris, as we call him), and you're in.

Deceptively simple. The real challenge is prying yourself away from this evil wonderland of information and entertainment once you're in. The problem is that they have literally, I mean seriously, I mean REALLY put EVERYTHING on the Internet. If you desire every David Letterman Top Ten list since 1987, it's there. If you want a copy of the last State of the Union address, it's there. If you want a burger with fries and a large coke, it's there.

As I merged onto the information superhighway and began to change lanes with increasing speed, I found myself needing food, sleep, and other people less and less. I began to spend inordinately inappropriate amounts of time sitting in front of a $2000 machine built by some tiny nerd in Japan. It reached the point where for myself, a freshman at this huge university not really knowing many people, the computer became my best friend. I gave it a name (Karen); I had it baptized. I would whisper nurturing things into its disk drives when it had a problem running a program. I refused to let others talk about it in my room as though it weren't there. I tried not to hurt its feelings by spending too much time on my other activities. I took it to candle-lit dinners in downtown Evanston. I hoped it didn't think I was getting too serious too fast; I didn't want to rush things. But the relationship was going great.

Then a comment a friend of mine made to me (as I was also on the Internet) helped me realize I needed help. He mentioned that if I could register through computer, I would never need to leave my room. Just go buy the books, attend the first class, show up for the tests, and get my grades. My roommate could sneak enough food to sustain me out of the cafeteria. I had Karen; what more did I need?

This woke me up pretty quick. I had to break up with Karen (it was hard, but I let her keep the earrings I bought her for our anniversary). I started to try spending less time on the computer, and more interacting with genuine people. I didn't want to become the guinea pig in some unplanned experiment to computerize the world.

And as much as it had entertained me before, the information superhighway also began to frighten me a bit. If registration and even some discussion groups would be run through computer, could the classes themselves be far behind? If you can order books and tapes and magazines through America On-Line, could all other products be far behind, eliminating stores completely? If you can access news and programs from around the world on the Net, could the obsolescence of television and print media be far behind? Is it necessarily a good thing that so much can be acquired so easily (literally with the touch of a button) and with so little human interaction?

I didn't think so. I escaped from the Internet relatively unscathed, and with a cool sound clip of R2-D2 bleeping. We all can. All it takes is a pulling of the plug.