Cyberspace not adequate to describe Internet
By TIMOTHY MEIER
Online Editor
With all of the hype surrounding the Internet these days, I’ve come to hate some of the most common terms, especially the ones used by television and movies. My coworkers have learned to deal with my complaints about these things twice weekly, and even more often if video games are mentioned, but that’s a subject for next week (plug plug).
The term “cyberspace” doesn’t make any sense to me, because it’s just a made-up word from a book by William Gibson, an excellent author. “Cyberspace” means, in the context of the book, a virtual reality trip through the matrix, metaverse, etc. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me, the Internet is far from being virtual reality. I still have to open up all of my programs manually, and it’s not the sort of VR experience you see in movies like “Johnny Mnemonic” or “Hackers”, both of which are pretty crappy.
I’ve also learned to hate the phrase “surfing the Internet.” You can’t possibly surf the Internet, unless you have a T-1 line, which is a very fast connection into your computer. Using the Internet otherwise is more like walking uphill on a piece of ice barefooted, and that’s on a good day.
http://www.activegrams.com/series/memos.html Those of us who work in the corporate world, even us part-time folk, have witnessed the pain of memos which detail how we can and can’t work. Now you can send painful memos to your coworkers via the Internet, if you have access at work. If you don’t have a way to e-mail the memos to your coworkers, you can print them out and leave them on their desk.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/9932/mja.html Do you have a mindless job? Chances are, your mindless job isn’t any worse then some of the jobs listed on this page. Some of these jobs make my mindless job look great. But others don’t sound that bad, especially the network response center operator. Then there are some that just sound bad, like the cemetery repairman.
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/demotivation.html We’ve all seen those cheesy inspiration posters on the walls of the office, or in children’s classrooms. For those of us who’ve become jaded, these are the alternative posters to hang, with titles like “Losing: If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.” A warning though, this site is trying to sell you posters. Next payday, maybe I’ll get one for work.
http://www.jlc.net/~useless/ How many of us have wasted hours at work, doing something with no real use other than amusing ourselves? This site will give us even more stupid things to do. I particularly enjoyed the trick for turning a cup of water upside down without spilling any. Once again, this site is trying to sell you something, but it nevertheless has some good information.
http://www.donsbosspage.com/ If you spend your workday looking on the Internet, but are paranoid about being caught goofing off by the boss, then this is the page for you. It gives tips on how to change the settings on your web browser to make it look like you’re actually working. It also has some cool javascript that allows you to make your page look like an excel spreadsheet using a remote control looking thing.
Questions, statements, fuzzy kittens, etc. can be sent to runner@csubak.edu for answers, evaluation, or, in the case of the kitten, scratching behind the ears.
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Wednesday, May 12, 1999
12:07 PM