By Todd Jackson
I can hardly forget the joy that filled my heart when I connected to the Internet for the first time. Whoo-ah! Try to understand that I started typing on a VIC-20. Then I made the bold step to second generation DOS. And here I was a couple years later and my computer could actually suck information through a phone cord. My computer screen was no longer just a boring collection of familiar images and sentences. I could actually see things that came from other computers. We were all pretty darn impressed.
It only took a few years and our good-humoured crush for this process grew into our present state of disrepair–a strung-out, twisted, my-life-is-meaningless-without-you infatuation. I wish I was overexaggerating. In a recent interview, Dr. Rob Weiss, the clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, explained that Internet smut is an intense addiction on par with the most tempting drugs. In fact, right now, millions of people are glued to their chairs held in the grip of an endless supply of photographed nakedness. And according to Dr. Weiss it’s the thrill of the chase that gets them. So many pictures of penetration. So little time.
The lecherous aren’t the only ones chomping at the bit. The business world just writhes at the thought of the Internet. According to a report just in from Allied Business Intelligence, an American research think-tank, next we’ll be sold complete home networks. Sure, lots of you have cable modems. But do you have ethernet hook-ups all through your kitchen? Plenty of folks will. Imagine the stunned children sitting at the kitchen table, ignoring their Froot Loops, trapped by the meditative stream of porn.
We don’t want this and neither do the kids. Given the absurd distraction of this endless sea of information, we need to cut the cord. Let’s admit to ourselves that we can’t handle the technology and let’s start to rebuild.
How would we stomach the loss of our fix? First and foremost it looks like we’ll need porn therapy programs. In a controlled environment we could wean people off slowly from hardcore, to softcore, to Victoria’s Secret, to the Sears catalogue and so on.
The rest of what we need from the Internet would be easy. If you take a sober look at the technology, it hasn’t been revolutionary. As far as I can tell, its value comes down to this: e-mail, online newspapers and renewing your books at the library. Granted, these are downright handy services. The Internet does the job well because it quickly brings information to us and sends it away.
But before the Internet, we already had the technology to transmit large amounts of data. We called it "the mail." And what was the problem with the mail? It was too slow. So instead of speeding up mail service we tried to unite all the computers in the world through a web of wiring.
Here’s another tactic. If we gave even half the money to Canada Post that everyone gives to Internet providers and computer companies, we could inject the mail system with such a jolt we’d have mail pick-up and delivery three times daily. The stream of meaningless messages and forwarded jokes, newspapers and library forms could continue unscathed. And all of this without the dangers of the Internet: eye strain, addiction and the prevailing heartache of repetitive wrist injury.