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Copyright Skip Ploss and Acorn Press Newspapers.
WAGONS HO!
Isn't technology wonderful? Right here, in your little corner
of New England you have the ability (given the fact that certain
hardware/software parameters have been met) to communicate
on a global scale for the price of a local phone call (plus
a small monthly charge). That's right, for the price of a
call from Weston to Wilton you can be "talking" with someone
in Zurich, London, Tokyo or Buenos Aires (If you are one of
the 45 or 50 percent of surveyed Americans who don't realize
that those cities are not a local phone call, you have a more
important problem to address other than internet access.)
I am speaking, of course, of the Internet and it's myriad
of subsections and components. "Now wait a second", I can
hear some of you saying already, "isn't that just for mindless
chat and explicit sex?"
Yes and no. The Internet is so much more than, as one friend
put it, "Pornography and #*!$." It is about the free flow
of information. It is about global communication on a personal
scale. Is there "sex" on the internet? Sure, but it exists
in magazine store, on television and in movies also. Is it
easy for a child to gain access to it online? Again, sure
but it is much easier, I believe for your child to view graphic
sex and violence on your premium cable channels or rent it
from local video store.
Another guy I know one said, "the internet is like walking
into the Library of Congress blind with no card catalog."
I like to think of it as walking into the Library of Congress
with very helpful librarians and user-friendly catalogs except
you have to find them on your own.True it can be rather intimidating
the first few times, but you'll soon get the hang of it and
out and about.
I regularly "talk" to Lennart Widmark in Sweden who maintains
LW's fishing Page [ http://www.ts.umu.se/~widmark/lwfishxl.html]
about fishing, take part in a lively free for all discussion
on cars in London at CAR Magazine's site [ http://www.mpn.com/eol/car/
], and communicate with people I haven't seen since high school
(no, you can't have their addresses). I download the latest
software updates for the programs I use most from Adobe [http://www.adobe.com], get tips from software
developers like Photoshop guru Kai Krausse [http://the tech.mit.edu/KPT/KPT.html],
find great recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines [http://www.epicurious.com],
get the latest update from the Galileo mission [http://ccf.arc.nasa.gov/galileo_probe]
and finally, for those with a religious bent, there Is the
Vatican Online, the official
website for the Pope [http://www.vatican.va/].
The internet is at once a global library, gaint mall, well-stocked
magazine store, coffee house and post office. It's there,
you might as well use. So lets explore together. We'll start
close to home, then proceeed farther afield. I'll go on ahead
and report back once and awhile and you let me know if there's
something good I missed along the way. Even if you're not
online you're still welcome onboard this wagon train.
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