Unfortunately, I must report that the Information Superhighway (Dooh! Another overused buzzword!) has claimed yet another victim on it's ridiculously long list of casualties. My Opa (Dutch for grandpa, for the linguistically declined out there) has discovered the Internet. An avid gardener, we have already predicted that he is going to just cover the yard with rocks so he has more time to surf the net. Perhaps I can find some good gardening sites such as GardenWeb and try to save his well-kept yard from turning into a bed of lava.
It all started last week, when he was over at our house. My parents demonstrated the Internet to him (on my Win95 comfiguration), and although it wasn't immediately apparent, he was gone from that point on. (This site was, unfortunately, one of the ones shown to him. Nonetleless, it's only partially my fault! I'm innocent! I was framed!)
We didn't know it at the time, but we've lost him. He went and bought a new computer (his third Packard Bell... Now that's brand loyalty!) and ever since, he's been surfing the net via Netcom. Throughout my various aunts and uncles, predictions have been made that my Oma will have to get an Internet account of her own in order to communicate with him. Almost all attempts to call him have resulted in a busy signal, sonce they only have one phone line in their house.
So far, he's been online less than a week, there is already talk of referring him to Netaholics Anonymous. It amazes me that a 70-year old could so easily get addicted to the Internet. We have to winder just how long it is before the FDA starts labeling WWW pages as addictive. Presidential candidates would take flak for recieving campaign contributions from the ISP lobby, and the ISPs would start getting sued over irrepairable damage done by the countless hours wasted on the net. Sounds like fun.
Speaking of casualties, I knew that my systems were being too quiet. The other day, I found that a rather vital directory on Zippy's Win95 configuration has mysteriously disappeared, but in it's place, 16MB of added RAM appeared, bringing the total to 32. When I tried reinstalling Win95, my CD-ROM drive began freaking out, with constant read errors and funny noises. To add insult to injury, my brother can play all the audio CDs he wants without any problems. Like I have said before, my computers conspire against me.
As technology becomes more and more prevalent as a part of modern life, they are going to claim more and more casualties. YOU COULD BE ONE OF THEM. If you are spending more than eighteen hours a day om the Internet, or your ISP sent a sympathy card to your wife the one time when you logged off, you may be in trouble. If you find yourself speaking technobabble in polite conversations, or regard Yahoo as a small cross-section of the sites you've visited, seek professional help. If you name all of your computers, or write a weelky humor column on the Internet, you are in dire straits. Run (don't walk) away from your computer, unplug the ISDN link you got connnected to your brain, and find a pencil and paper quickly, before you end up as another piece of flotsam in cyberspace (oops! Another buzzword!)