Roadkill Mounts on Superhighway

Business Directions 29 May 1995

I have surfed the rollers at Hawaii's Waikiki,  surfed the mud at Woodstock,  and even surfed the oil on a Perth racetrack.  But nothing nowhere has prepared me for surfing the Net.

Unlike waves, mud, and oil, the Internet is a first-up experience.  No one has seen it before.  There is no history to learn from  - even though,  as the German historian Hegel said: the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history  :-)

There is no road map to follow - travelogues are talked about but nothing useful has arrived.  No manual or safety instructions, no explanation of signposts, no emergency procedures, no first aid stations for accident victims, and no RAC to get you back on the road when you have fallen off  :'-(

Casualties are mounting.  Perhaps it is time the onramp to the super highway displays a warning: Avalanche territory ahead: proceed with caution!

The greatest number of casualties occur from being buried under an avalanche of indiscriminate information.  Not a pretty sight.  Frighteningly messy, in fact.

A seemingly normal well-adjusted earthperson can be turned, within minutes, into a gibbering glazy-eyed android, temporarily dysfunctional for anything but the most mundane of human tasks eg, making coffee without spilling, drinking coffee without dribbling, doodling on paper not desktop.  A nice guy becomes a propeller head X:-)   

The exceptions are the modern day equivalents of firewalkers and freefall skydivers:  the innocent Sunday drivers casually cruising up and down the Net, without fear or failure, making journey after journey totally unscathed and non the worse for wear  :-o

Or anyone under the age of 15    =:-)    Oh reckless, feckless youth!   Is it time, perhaps, to reconsider the great division in the evolution of civilisation ?  Rather than bc and AD, should we now refer to bn beforenet and  AN  ApresNet  :->

Think about it.  Or,  for the AN wired, cyber it  [:-).  Two different before & after worlds with distinctly different players & stayers, with incomprehensibly different language codes and conduct.   Not wishing to pursue the bc-AD analogy too much  :-o   there really is a world-changing difference between the shalt-not bn generations and the no-rules AN people, who have multiplied from 5 professors in 1990 to 36 million in 1995   :-"

Okay you bn humanoids out there, time to hit the road.

PRE-TRIP PREPARATION

Forget about the street directory, your compass, your RAC membership, St John Ambulance subscription, PI Travel  insurance, or even saying goodbye to your kids.  They are long gone up the road,  anyway.

Do give the dog a big wet one :-X and maybe put a Gideon in with your packed lunch - well, you never know what you will find comforting along the way   ;-) 

Put St Chris   +-(:-)  on top of your  monitor if you don't like to travel alone,  buckle up, put on the crash hat and fingerless driving gloves, flex the fingers above the keyboard, tap the cybers and pull out into the traffic on the info superhighway.

Don't bother signalling, no one is looking.  L and P plates are meaningless too.

So while the nanoseconds are ticking by as you wait for linkup with your server - unless you are an academic with the luxury of direct access to AARnet - lets talk traffic.

While there are no traffic laws per se,  there are a few do's and don'ts on the Net, known as NETiquette.  Before you start punching the mobiphone to order your copy super express c.o.d. - no wait, Ill pick it up where can I get it now  - STOP.  There isn't one.

The electronic information world  changes so quickly that very little is  "written down"  for later reference.  Later is so different, the stuff from before is rarely relevant.

Just like rules, which are obsolete by the time they are printed.

Just like most management manuals, but that is another story for another time :-)

So how do you learn the correct ahem NETiquette to prevent embarrassing yourself in front of 30million+ netters around the entire planet   *<:-o)   ???

Most cyberheads advise first-timers to throw yourself onto the net and learn as you go.  Columbus-like.  Cyberheads do not understand those of us descended from lemmings who tend not to enjoy throwing ourselves over an unknown abyss.

Especially knowing that if you  goof up super-badly on the net you will be punished by being flamed.  This learn-as -you-drive business puts a whole new meaning to the term trial by fire  8-O

But I swear on my subscription to Wired that you will not goof up at all if you follow the very few, very simple, and very sensible NETiquette suggestions that follow.  These will keep you crime-free on the road until you get up to speed.

That is half the drama.  The other half is to avoid becoming a victim, not of crime but of traffic jams and traffic overload.  The avalanches of too much information, too fast, too chaotically, too cluttered, too messy.    The story of  how Nice-guy-becomes a X:-)

HINTS FOR HAPPY HIGHWAYERS

A few hints of the highway,  from successful day trippers, hitchhikers, bushwalkers and prime movers.

1. SAY WHAT ?
   
   What are you travelling for ?  Why are you on the highway ?  What is your hoped-for destination ?  Are surfing the Net for fun and exercise,?  Fine - your light cruising attitude - altitude? -  will keep you out from under the avalanche.  You can just zip onto the offramp - quit -  the highway the nanosecond you don't want to be there, for whatever reason.
   
   Are you are seeking specific info, or wanting to contact another Netter,?  Use their correct electronic address.  I have had messages bounce from Perth to Buenos Aires to Oslo to Houston to Tranquillity Base  ;-) and back  twice before being told in plain cyberspeak that the message address contained an error and could not be delivered.  Thankfully we do not yet have videonet so only my mascot  8(:-) witnessed my changing facial hue.
   
   The reason for embarrassment at such an error is not from my fumble-finger typing, but more to do with the most important feature of the Net: Time.
2. TIME.
   
   Time is not only money, it is everything of value on the Net.  The Net has 30m+ users because it is so fast, so immediate, so direct, so interactive.  When you get on the highway and indicate a destination, the Net processes your journey to find the quickest path possible.  In nanoseconds.   Your message can bounce anywhere and back.
   

   An interesting phenomenon occurring in Australia is the traffic jams on AARNet whenever Uni students return from a break; they hit the highway en masse.  Email virtually grinds to a halt until the traffic jam clears itself, message by message crawling along, exactly like bumper-to-bumper traffic into our cities on the Monday night after a long weekend.

   Non academic users of AARNet soon will be detoured  to other links to the Net.

   When on the Net, be brief.  Be concise.  Be correct.  Be considerate.  You wont get flamed for being long-winded or sloppy, but you wont be respected as a happy hip Netter, either.

   The Net is a self-regulating system, which is  why bureaucrats are so keen to take it over.  Anarchy, they cry.  It works, netters reply.

   Have you noticed how personal respect seems to matter so much more in self-regulation than within rule-bound bureaucracies.  I want to be known as a considerate Netter.  Conversely, many public servants do not believe there is much esteem within the PS  :-(

   Learn cyberspeak by really looking at the way dialogues occur on the Net.  Cyberspeak is language minimalism.  Note the conventions of <quoting>  only what is necessary.   Note the scarce use of punctuation.  

   Realise that the more concise your message, the less emotion it can convey.  Impart humanity within your cyberspeak by using the available codes :-)   Keep a watch for new ones,  use them, share them with colleagues.  Create your own   @-,--'-->-

   Speed & accuracy of communicating is the important factor, not the aesthetics of the Queens English.   If someone with the name Macbeth can withstand the noisy rolling over of Wm Shakespeare whenever she uses cyberspeak,  surely you can cyberspeak as well   :-7

3. HIT THE OFFRAMP  BEFORE OVERLOAD
   

   The roadkill on the info superhighway is increasing because the Net is working so well.  We can readily   :-)pun   access far more info than we ever need or more than we can even sort into useful and non-useful categories. Information overload.

   If you see a huge amount of unsorted info coming down on your patch of the highway,  get out from under it fast or you risk being the next victim of an info avalanche.  Possibly terminal.  Always battered.  Often never to venture forth on the highway again.

   Newsgroups are a classic example of the exponential increase in the amount of info available.  Last year there were 3647 newsgroup listings you could sign up to receive their info.  How many now ?   Well, yesterday a knowledgeable cyberpunk  - that's redundant but worth emphasising - said  13000.

4.  RIDE THE VERGE WITH EMAIL
   

   Email is an easy gentle  way to learn the highway conventions.  Like slowly driving along the verge until you are comfortable to join the faster mainstream traffic.  Choose one - or max two - newsgroups to subscribe to until you become familiar with processing news items - sorting, printing, filing, forwarding on, etc.    But be careful which newsgroup you subscribe.

   To my combined amusement and horror I almost avalanched myself the first day of linkup to email.  As a futurologist I want info on the latest political, economic, social, and cultural changes occurring globally.  So I signed up for the General News group.

   That first morning I was faced with 1652 news items   8-O    What to do?!?   What would you do?   I saw the avalanche descending over my head and immediately hit the delete button.  Erased the whole lot unread.    It was a near escape.  Lesson learned.

   I desubscribed from General Newsgroup and subscribed to a more select but very internationally  leading edge group - alt-sust-agriculture for curious readers - where I get maybe 12 or so items a day.  Easy to manage as a new driver on the highway.

5. ADOPT A CYBERPET
   

   At the risk of being ageist, sexist, technist and any other ist I have not yet thought of, I encourage you to form a bonding relationship with a cyberhead, cyberpunk, cyberfreak, technofreak, whomever you can find truly wired and willing to consider your offer.

   Be prepared to offer in trade anything your wunderkind might find amusing, startling, or archaically useful, such as the ability to :

   • fill out forms, eg  insurance, tax, drivers license, credit cards ;
   • make homemade double choc chip muffins;
   • talk to lawyers, accountants, doctors, insurance underwriters, car sales staff, garage mechanics over 30 years old;
   • write reference letters to bank managers for loans to upgrade software, hardware, reebokwear, CD collection;
   • donate genuine 60-70s LedZep t-shirts, grunge (tattered) jeans & denim jackets;  and to
   • pull down from the attic your highschool collection of Phantom comics, Alfred E Neumann Mad magazines, and Elvis vinyls  5:-)

   Anything is worth the value of having a real person   ;-)   accessible to your panic calls to  rescue  you from some disaster  or totally weird technofreaky thingy on the highway.

   The Wise Old Men, the shamans, priests,  nobles, magii, elders,  venerable ancient ones,  Keepers,  chiefs, healers - all the powerful leaders of centuries of civilisation - have been replaced by 18 year old techno graduates  L:-) zooming around the Internet faster than the speed of light.   Best Net navigators and fix-it helpers you could have.

Head for the Net.  Have a safe and happy journey -  forever.   :-)

CYBERSPEAK SMILEYS           :-)
Also see http://www.greatbend.com/fredde/cybertlk.htm

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