|
Dear Mr. Gates, They say you know everything and that you can answer this question for me. A boy in my class told me there wasn't really any such thing as an internet. Is this true?
love,
|
 |
 |
Dear Virginia, The people who say there isn't any such thing as an internet are cruel and thoughtless indeed. Why, I myself have seen the internet many times before, and the internet loves all boys and girls very very much. After all, it's the internet that brings you presents like e-mail sex, extremist hate groups, WebTV, and AOL, as well as all kinds of child pornography and pictures of mommies and daddies having sex with dogs (and would your life be the same without them? Of course it wouldn't.). I suppose the reason some people don't believe in the internet is because of bad people like journalists, who decided for themselves what the internet was. Don't you remember all those TV commercials and magazine articles about the internet? Of course you do. They even gave it a name they liked better -- they called it The Information Superhighway. And the Information Superhighway was supposed to be better than the greatest thing ever. It was better than kittens. Even live kittens. Everyone knew about the Information Superhighway, and everyone wanted to see it for themselves. The journalists told everyone that the internet was something that would improve their lives. |
|
People started making TV commercials that showed the internet
doing all kinds of things. If there was anything to know about anything
in the world, the Information Superhighway had it. All people had to do
was to "get onto it." Then they would be better and different, and their
lives would have meaning. People even made movies about the
internet. For a little while, it was fashionable to talk about the
Superhighway, especially when you didn't know what it was. If you had the
internet, that meant that you could find out anything, or talk to
anyone in the whole wide world. The internet would introduce you to your
one true love. The internet would help you with your schoolwork. The
internet would cure your daily blues by providing you with your five
hundred channel universe and the internet would discover a cure for
cancer. If you didn't have the internet, you weren't a very good
person. The thing is, Virginia, that people found out that the Information Superhighway really wasn't what the journalists had promised them. You couldn't really have access to unlimited power and knowledge. That wasn't the internet's job. And instead of just accepting it and loving it for what it was the way normal people like you and I would, the journalists decided that, by God, they were going to make the internet behave like it was supposed to. So now they started doing magazine articles and TV documentaries about how bad the internet was. Suddenly, the internet was dangerous, especially for children. Lurking behind every corner were people who wanted to use the internet to subvert the minds of youngsters just like you. They wanted to teach you bad things and touch you in bad places. They were going to interfere in you getting help with your homework on the internet, because the journalists said that if you pressed the wrong button while looking up George Washington, you would find yourself in the Information Superhighway's Red Light District, and that scared a lot of people who knew even less about the internet than the journalists did. |