He’s a Dues-Paying Member of the Computer Illiterati

I read somewhere that the imminent wave of electronic technology will create hundreds of new millionaires.

NEWS FLASH: I will not be one of them.

While everyone else is zooming off merrily onto the information superhighway, I’ll still be gassing up alongside the dirt road of knowledge.

In a “Let’s Get Interactive” age, I’m still just a “Quit Buggin’ Me” kinda guy.

I’ve had one personal computer. Maybe you had the same model: the “Aaarrgh 2000.” I believe that line has been discontinued due to excessive consumer complaints. Anyway, it was given to me by a friend when he upgraded his system, and I thanked him profusely because it marked my entry into the computer world. Only after he was long gone did I come to discover his gift was the equivalent of giving me a dog with fleas.

The computer is now resting comfortably in its packing box in the back of my closet, next to the ski boots I haven’t taken out in five years. Needless to say, the contraption is probably obsolete by today’s standards, looking like something that may have been invented by Eli Whitney. It is available to the highest bidder, no reasonable offer refused.

Thus have I gone to bed every night for the last five years without a functional home computer. It has not been an easy sleep. It doesn’t comfort me to read that there are 30 million computers in American households. In other words, I realize that something may be passing me by.

I talked to a friend who’s riding the tail of the computer comet. He’s amazed at the wonders at his fingertips, especially after he “met” someone named Marla on his PC who invited him into her “room” for some talk about S-E-X.

I told him that “Marla” could well be a longshoreman from New Jersey, but he said, “What do I care?” I told him I saw a talk show where people have actually been bilked out of thousands of dollars by people they met over their home computers. “Marla’s not like that,” he said.

I don’t want you thinking I’m a modern-day Luddite. I don’t hate the computer or want all of them destroyed. I admit that my reaction is born largely of ignorance. Like all small-minded people, I fear the unknown.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to become computer-friendly. For example, after being disdainful of “Pong” when it hit the scene years ago, I came to excel at the game.

Deep down, I was hoping it was all a fad. I never really believed they could do all this computer stuff they said they could do. I was hoping it would be like the threats about the metric system--talk about it for years, throw everybody into a panic, then abruptly pull the plug on it.

This communications technology stuff, though, looks like it’s here to stay.

The tip-off is all these communications companies that want to merge. Cable companies wanting to merge with phone companies. I thought cable companies hated phone companies. Or is it the other way around? The articles always say the companies are “positioning” themselves for something, but then I can’t understand the rest of it.

I see where the “done deal” between the TCI cable company and Bell Atlantic fell through. The article said they would have reached 40% of all households. Reached 40% of all households to do what? Just what were these guys up to, anyway?

The deal was for $33 billion, so it sounds to me like a good one to have fallen through. Any transaction worth that much money is going to result in something that I can’t figure out.

Still, there is that prospect of becoming one of the new millionaires. That does give me pause.

A friend says the new interactive age will be looking for programming geniuses. I’m not too modest to say that I’ve always considered myself a programming genius, but my friend said they don’t mean from the standpoint of watching programs.

Fine. Have it their way.

I’m content to watch the parade pass by. I’m sure somebody will explain it all to me at the appropriate time. Somebody will come to the house, give me directions to the superhighway and wish me luck.

A final thought: As these geniuses are building the information superhighway, have any of them had the foresight to build some rest areas?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.