Being on the Internet is more addictive than smoking
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
It reminds me of when I was a little kid, stealing a snuffed-out cigarette from my father's ashtray, lighting up, taking a puff and feeling dizzy and giddy and grown up all at once. I hated the taste of cigarettes. I have always preferred Oreos and ice cream. But there was something so seductive about the idea of smoking that I worked on liking it for a while. This was what grown-ups did and I wanted to be a grown-up.
Logging on to the Internet the first time gave me that same heady feeling. I was going where millions of people already were. I was exploring new territory. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what to do. But I was eager for the experience.
The promise of a "five-hour free trial" was the lure. "Use electronic mail to exchange messages with over 10 million people throughout the world Check out Usenet News, the world's largest bulletin board with over 3,500 topics." I haven't checked out Usenet News yet. I've been too busy exchanging messages with people I don't know. Meeting people with names like "Dragon" and "Hearse." Talking about "Melrose Place" to the show's fans. There's a whole group of them out there, on line, typing in their used-to-be secret thoughts.
This is how the Internet works. First you need a computer with a modem. A modem lets your computer act like a telephone. You can send messages and receive them, only not orally. You type everything. You even type to dial. For example, to explore the Internet free, I turned on my computer, called up its communication software, typed in a phone number and got connected to Delphi, the company offering the free trial. After I typed in my name and a password, a list of options appeared on my screen. I could have chosen to explore Business and Finance, News, Weather, Sports, Groups and Clubs or a bunch of other things. But I picked Conference because that's what everyone talks about: making friends electronically.
I don't have a clue how the Internet works, how somebody can type a sentence in Peoria and have it end up on my screen 1,500 miles away. But I don't know how radios, television or the telephone work, either. So, I just followed the directions and did what the words on my screen told me to do. I pressed a few keys, hit return and suddenly there was this person "talking" to me.
We "talked" for 23 minutes. The screen told me this after I hung up. I would have said we'd talked at most 10 minutes. If I'd had a 23-minute conversation face-to-face or by telephone, I would have had something to mull over because something would have been said. But Internet conversation goes like this:
Me: Hi. Anybody out there?
The Other Person: I'm here.
Me: Where's here?
The Other Person: Kingston.
Me: Massachusetts?
The Other Person: No. England.
Me: England, really? How long have you been on line?
The Other Person: About a year.
I didn't know whether The Other Person was a he or a she until after we hung up. Then I went searching through an on-line directory, where he had his real name listed - if what he listed is his real name. You never know. It's easy to lie. It's convenient to lie. I lied when he asked me where I was from. Why wouldn't I lie? I could have been talking to Jack the Ripper.
That's what's scary about this new information highway. It's a highway into the unknown. And at times it's a dark highway where no one sees anyone's face, and what people tell you is all you can really know. It's fun, though, because it is dark and because it is new. And though parts of it are intimidating - even using it is intimidating - other parts are pure entertainment. There's a chat line for "Melrose Place" and "90210" fans. There are a million games. There's an entire encyclopedia on line. There's a wealth of information about law, government, politics, art, literature, religion, business, economics.
Me: But is this as addictive as it feels?
The Other Person: It's more addictive than you can imagine.
Cigarettes never trapped me. But the Internet has me hooked.
