Chapter fourteen image

Back to Nature

The Concluding Chapter

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, and yes, they are becoming very, very crowded. But are they useful?

Is this electronic lace doily something transcendental, transformational, consequential, or profound? Will it really change who we are?

John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Net’s main lobbying voice in Washington, has no doubt at all. “When I first got a sense of the Net,” he writes, “I went around saying that it would have a greater consequence on what it is to be human than movable type. I am now inclined to think this is the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.”

Excuse me while I wipe the hyperbole off my glasses. Did it just get a bit thick in here?

Okay, it is Barlow’s job to exaggerate, maybe, but he is not alone in his euphoric revelation. Idealistic thoughts of this sort crowd the Net and much of the attendant media coverage. The Internet, in some strained, bloodshot eyes, is not a mere technological marvel, but a religion. We will all, soon enough, find ourselves wired in, connected, interlaced, sipping at the holy font of digital knowledge, feeding on electrons rather than diet pretzels, and in this way we will be transformed, as Christian Darkin colorfully predicts, into one vast human mind, one giant human soul, one enormous, harmonious being.

If you’ve read any science fiction, you know where the idea comes from, but science fiction is fiction, and the Internet is real.

I spent my year in the woods, raking up those leaves of jargon, fishing for truth in the pond of the electronic culture (even surfing a bit), and warming my hands by the virtual bonfire called Usenet, but I’m afraid my conclusions are a bit less dramatic.

Will the Internet revolutionize planetary culture, transform global politics, rearrange the balance of world power? I looked for evidence, but I didn’t find much. Sure, there are changes along the margin, some interesting changes, but as much as they might deserve it, I just don’t see the old institutions tumbling down any time soon. If I were a dissident in Faroffawoola and had a computer, a modem, and total Net access, I would be thankful, and I would be very, very careful. My ability to communicate through an electronic network would help my cause, perhaps, but my problems would not be solved.

Is the American democracy, then, on the verge of some critical, evolutionary, Internet-inspired transformation? Will the entrenched Washington bureaucracy and the unrepresentative representatives go away with the push of a button that allows us all to vote at home, by computer, having our say on every bill, every amendment, every last federal initiative? Well, to be honest, I didn’t find that either. Imperfect as it is, there is logic behind the idea of representative democracy, and the only way to really budge Washington would be if we all showed up one morning with our yellow bulldozers. And even then, who would get the federal contract to rebuild? Someone has to decide.

And what about those frightening, apocalyptic predictions of imminent doom? Will the Net lead to a new era of international sabotage? Yes, I suppose it will, because there will always be spies, and spooks, and counterspooks. Some of these slimeballs are perhaps breaking into Pentagon computers at this very moment, finding the dirty pictures some bored programmer stored on a corner of the hard disk. And maybe they are also finding plans to build a better bomb, or maybe they are finding the fake plans to build a better bomb planted by subterfuge experts at the CIA. Or maybe they are just finding that all the phone lines are busy, and their modems won’t connect.

Are we headed toward a world filled with anemic drones laboring away at sterile keyboards, never taking a moment to sniff the ragweed, never twisting an ankle while tossing a frisbee to their flea-ridden dogs? Well, we might be. America, at least, has been headed there for some time, roughly since the invention of the fluorescent tube. The Internet, though, is just a symptom of our technological cocoonery, not the root cause.

I searched the electronic woods for all of these enormous, world-shattering, status-quo-upsetting changes. I looked and looked until my eyeballs would no longer focus, but I just didn’t find proof. Instead of vastly altering our world, what I found was that the Internet and all its clever bells and whistles are rapidly being assimilated into our world.

Just look at the uses the American government has found for the Net: more press releases, more transcripts of speeches, more form letters to constituents, more smoke, more mirrors, more of the same. Or check out the infomercials that are beginning to crowd the World Wide Web, such as the Antarctica Gift Shop and Pizza Hut’s electronic order desk. Yes, the Net gives every citizen a vehicle to discuss global affairs, religion, existential thought, but the most popular Usenet groups still rant on about petty politics, lurid sex, and prime-time television.

Will the arrival of vast electronic networks change the fundamental way we relate as human beings? I doubt that, as well, especially the “fundamental” part. But it was here, at least, that I found the most potential. Falling in love by E-mail is not so different from trading inked notes, but it does tend to whittle down the distance. The support one finds in on-line support groups is not so different from the comfort available at your local church, men’s group, or AA meeting, but it is more convenient, safer, and thus taken advantage of more readily. Electronic communities like the Cellar and the WELL are an efficient way for busy people to stay connected, at least intellectually, to other busy people. And my ability to trade gardening tips with folks in the Netherlands will probably give me pause should a U.S. president ever suggest we annihilate them with a nuclear bomb.

Will cybersex ever replace the real thing?

God, I hope not, and having tried both, I would be very surprised.

So what are the implications?

The plan, according to a consensus of experts in telecommunications, the computer industry, and cable networks, as well as Al Gore himself, is that every home will eventually be wired and ready, every single American (and some day the world) will have access to this amazing resource, and this access will make our lives fuller, richer, easier, more wonderful somehow.

Will it? Probably not.

Listen to Thoreau again: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

He is right, of course. An “improved means to an unimproved end” simply gets us where we were going anyway, though maybe a bit more quickly. Therein lies the central fallacy of the Information Superhighway. We are talking about a machine here: a pretty interesting one, but basically a big machine that spits data across long distances. Despite what varied sorts of machines we have at our disposal, despite all the uploads and downloads and listservers in the world, we are still going to be the same human beings, the same contentious, territorial, ridiculous, lovely, procrastinating souls. Net users love to crow that they are “connected,” but to what? To the Net, of course; but ultimately we are just connected to one another, and that doesn’t make us any different, it just means we are more in touch.

Wherever the human race is headed—and I’m not sure where that is—the Net may get us there faster, but we are still headed the same way. The electronic culture won’t change the content of our lives, it will simply change the pace. We will all soon be swaying as one to the same quick Al Gore rhythm.

Can we just turn away, on the other hand, ignore the coming of the Net, cover our ears to the incredible traffic noise and belching smoke of the approaching Superhighway?

Thoreau tried that. He went off into his own woods, lived the simple life, tuned himself into the slow cycles of nature, ate his nuts and berries, shut himself off from all that was changing. Yet he didn’t stay, did he? He eventually came back out and published his book.

Escaping the progress of mankind, ignoring the inevitable forward movement, is a common enough fantasy, but not much of a reality. The simple fact exists, this is our future.

But don’t worry, it is probably not so bad.

How will we use the Net, the Web, the electronic lace doily, when it eventually weaves itself into every primitive home?

We will use it for entertainment, surely; increasingly we will use it for convenience; perhaps the day will come when we will have to use it for business. Eventually it will be integrated into the general infrastructure of government and commerce, and we will barely remember the day it wasn’t there. Think of the telephone. Or for that matter, television. We are hard-pressed to exist without them, but did they ultimately change the world? Not that much, I think. Not in any fundamental way.

And as for myself, having spent these past twelve months hiking deep into the Internet forest, how did I survive?

Quite nicely, thank you.

But my head hurts, my eyes ache, and there are mornings when I think one more speck of vital information, one more fascinating tidbit of Usenet data, might just detonate my brain. Tempting as it is, no one needs to know everything.

Thoreau devotes an entire chapter of Walden to his occasional visitors, those brave people who tramped through the mud to sit in one of his three chairs, to nestle in his tiny cabin, those times when he and his guests “stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath.” My own friends sometimes stand too close, their breath can sometimes stink of stale coffee and smoke, some of them have stubbled cheeks and others have crooked jowls, but right now I greatly miss them. What I really want to do is meet these friends at a back booth of some Thai restaurant, eat platter upon platter of pungent food, shout across the table, and share all that’s on our minds without the benefit of first thinking. I want to find the homeliest of these friends, the one most given to popping off half-cocked, the one who reeks the most of garlic, and I want to give the guy a hug.

A big hug. A real hug. With real arms.

The virtual world is virtually awesome, but it is only a virtual world, a reflection. I yearn for the real world, with all its torpid shortcomings.

The Information Superhighway is indeed big, fast, and dizzying, and if there is somewhere you want to reach quickly, it beats the living hell out of side alleys, service roads, secondary boulevards, and city streets. But right now, frankly, I just want to park my car awhile.

Drive out to a real forest, park my car, step outside, and take a good long look at the scenery.

I love the scenery.

I love the way it holds so still.

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