The Luddite's Lament

THE GMP COLUMN
(An APEX-J Column)

THE LUDDITE'S LAMENT

by Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D.


   Web instruction given me by a computer center snob,
   Convinces me that I must surrender my day job.
   My energy deserts, my mental tide at ebb,
   Exhaustion and discouragement as I learn to crawl the Web.

     So, I took pride in the fact that despite my Medicare vouchers, I
could keep up with it all. I managed to stay afloat on ARPAnet and grew
with the superhighway laying my own peculiar brand of asphalt. I played
with AI, even published in the area and won a major award for my design of
a CMC course and served on a committee for a Ph.D. candidate researching
CAI. I blushed at ALTsex on USEnet and exchanged mail with many a
Listserv. But now I find I can no longer even keep up with the acronyms
let alone the process. Http and and Html have me completely buffaloed and
I am hung in the World Wide Web waiting for some cosmic spider to consume
me. Alas!

     Now the preceding which I will label ":-)" for the internet literate
(although anyone of literary cast would recognize it as the trope know as
"irony") actually is uttered quite seriously. I am in angry parle. During
the last week, I eavesdropped as a perfectly sane and highly creative
professor attempted to teach a humanities course on the world wide Web. He
had a "home page" you see, to which he affixed a syllabus, chat rooms,
resources, exhibits, all manner of goodies to which to point and click.
Although he was teaching an artsy course, he had to take time to teach
technology to his students, and then he pulled them into a totally
autistic enterprise in which he had full control of their minds.

     I watched and thought of Michael Caine in "Ipcress File," forcing
that nail through the palm of his hand to resist the "commie"
brainwashing, and I wondered what would happen to these students. What
learning would they come away with. If you have never participated in the
inchoate blabber of Webchat, it is itself a surrealistic treat, a tribute
to James Joyce. Were I a novelist, I could spin my own Web. But it is also
a nightmare of an illusion nested in a scam. It is the similitude of
conversation; it gives dimension to the cliche "virtual."  It is not
human, nor does it hold any human potential whatsoever, unless we can get
the kids in a live focus group to talk about it.

     I mentioned this to my big shot friend, the head of our computer
center. He conceded he "doesn't do much with the Web, but we have a lot
invested in it," and he committed to bringing me "up to speed" on the Web
and the richnesses, therein.

     Verily, this afternoon, on assignment from my friend, the head of our
computer center, a major guru is coming to my house to try, once more, to
teach me the wonders of the Web. I have been through it twice now, have
practiced on my own. I have sat with two beautiful women who attempted to
take me by the hand and lead me through the arcane filaments, and while
the former was a joy, the latter was a horror. I met empty construction
sights, cosmic disorder, bad planning, an occasional topic of interest
which seemed to dematerialize before me in midair.

     I found myself, I think, in the world of unrestrained ego. Home pages
are like pre-morbid headstones. They are outlets for displaying to the
world the person who would like to be seen as. The preceding solecism
expresses the thought. You can put what you like on your home page, but
that, unlike the better mousetrap, does not guarantee anyone will beat a
path to your door.  The joy is in doing it.

     Like so much of the internet, the Web is an outlet for ego. I said in
previous writings that the internet is an arena for unpublished authors
and actors with no audience. The clamor for attention is intense, the
advertising often fraudulent, and the product usually defective.
Information is fragmentary, badly organized, hard to come by, unless, of
course, one uses a commercial data base which provides exactly what is
needed for a price.

     The Web takes this concept to his zenith. One contributor to an
internet list characterized the Web as a "library in which all the books
were piled in disorderly heaps and people had left the little numbers off
the binding."  There are, I understand, paid librarians whose job it is to
find things on the Web, and I find this notion laudable. But were I to set
out to look, I would have no idea where to go, because there is no way of
knowing what is trapped in the Web, how it is linked together, or how to
get to it except serendipitously.

     I believe, truly, there must be someone who understands the concept.
I understand it this way. We are all equal. All knowledge is presumed to
have the same value and entitled to clamor for attention. People may
advertise their wares without having any wares.  Government agencies may
satisfy their obligation to serve the public by putting up everything they
have with no apparent pattern and declaring they are free and open to
inspection. Some cabal must meet somewhere to organize this
disorganization because there are obviously sophisticated computer
programs that permit us to access...whatever.

     I use Netscape. I have a mouse that works too fast and I am mouse
dyslexic anyway so there is an initial handicap. My screen has menu bars
and cute little icons and I have to consider carefully before I finally
learned that I must click on "open" to get a space in which I can enter an
address. I still do not know how to clear that space to put in another
address so I have to blend keystrokes and the delete key so I can open up
opportunities to go somewhere else.

     I wait a lot with the Web while the words "contacting host" flashes
on the bottom of my screen. I wait a lot as graphics appear, but
apparently my high resolution machine is not highly resolved to produce
Web pictures because most of what I see looks like it may have been done
by a drunken Jackson Pollock. I wonder what the folks who go after nudie
pictures actually see and if they can get their psychic "rocks" on on
pixel porn. I think it would be easier to cruise out to the adult store on
the city line and pay the twelve bucks and get some good photography.

     I know the technology is "imperfect" but then I wonder what it would
take to make it "perfect." What would a perfect Web look like? Does anyone
have an idea or is this thing growing like a shantytown in a Brasilia
suburb?  It took Dewey to make libraries accessible to humans. Who will
humanize the Web?

     Anyway, I finally get my "picture," often of some home page owner I
would have rather not met, and I get some blue headings I can click on. I
note that once I click on them, they turn magenta to remind me that I
clicked on them. So redundant is the Web you need these little reminders.

     When I got to "Mayo Clinic" last night and clicked on "Doctor
Information" I thought I might get some current reports of medical
research. Instead I got an advertisement for the "free" journal you could
subscribe to for a price. I find that sort of blatant commercialism often.
I take it for granted, but I also note that I do not voluntarily invite
people to mail me catalogues and ads and when I get them I place them
immediately in the recycle bin. I have no way of doing that to unwanted
Web advertisements.

     Last night I also located a Website that sold methods by which I
could attain eternal life. I went searching for the Edgar Bronfman home
page and a chance at a free sample of Crown Royal, but I could not find an
index. Someone told me there were "yellow pages" for the Web, but that
they were in print. Is that mind boggling, or what?  In print?  I am
incredulous. With this wonder of the information page, they have to put
their director in print. I think this says something about credibility and
confidence but I am not yet sure what.

     I do have a day job. I work as editor for a reputable publishing
house. We publish books, and I must spend time reading manuscripts and
making notes for the authors. I also write books. I have written a great
many and I have equipped myself with shelves of dictionaries and
encyclopedias, reference works of all sorts, style manuals and the like. I
can use them efficiently. I have been doing it for years. I have found
nothing on the Web (or gopher either, for that matter) equals what I have
on my shelf. Now, I must get up and move physically to look at these books
and some of them are heavy and I do have serious cardiac disease so....

     But that still does not justify Web in my eyes.

     I thought of my eight-track tape player moldering down in my
basement. I thought of TV in 1952 and everyone jumping up and down about
how this would replace the classroom teacher. I listen to the claims made
about the Web and watch the academics hustling fat grants to design
courses for the Web and I really want to write Newt Gingrich about all
this. I met Mr. Gingrich at a World Future Society Meeting in 1980 and I
think he would be in favor of the Web, and I would like to tell him that
it is no use whatsoever to working people.

     I will continue to work with people who work with it. I am interested
in what they do, what they dream about. I am more interested, however, in
the following question.

     Are we making a whole generation autistic?

     I wonder at the social efficacy of forcing people into solitary
learning, into enticing them further to isolate themselves from one
another by locking to a screen. I am quite disabled, I must wait for
people to come to me most of the time. I do a great deal of "socializing"
on the internet. But I do not advocate the loneliness of invalidism as de
rigeur for academic learners. I do not advocate it as a pedagogical style.
In a sense, the Web was made for me to amuse myself with. It is my circus
(and there are enough clowns on it) and I should be enjoying myself.

     Instead, I am worrying about human groups. Can the Web be integrated
with human contact so that it might assist learning? Is it possible to use
the Web for GDSS so that we can facilitate human efforts to work with each
other? There should be grounds for optimism somewhere here.

     Instead, I am depressed at the future prospects, at the possibilities
contained therein for brainwashing, self indulgence, isolation, distortion
of information, and corruption of pedagogy. I do not see it as the root of
all evil, but I see enough horror out there to wish that folks would ask
some questions before they allow themselves to be victimized by
shibboleths about freedom of expression, creativity, liberated learning,
other voices, political correctness, and technological kairos.

     To be more specific, what is designed into a Website is controlled by
the designer. The information is not unbiased nor is it complete by any
means. The chance for distortion approximates 100%. The Web concentrates,
at the moment, on cuteness, display, Mailerized advertisements for the
self. It displays the versatility of the homepage designers to all comers,
but I wonder at how many people come.

     If you build it, they will come?  Not bloody likely.  Even with
millions of people crawling the Web, there are enough egotists designing
home pages to deter all but the most intrepid (and unemployed) to go
looking for gems on this magnificent information landfill. And there I
have the metaphor I was grasping for. The Web is the information landfill
on the information superhighway.

     I think it is time for a summit meeting, for a "Web Commissioner" for
some sort of effort to make order out of the chaos. I wander the maze
feeling very much like Sean Connery looking for the "Poetic" in that
stranger Escher-like library. I feel disjointed when I crawl the Web. It
is an apt metaphor. I am Jeff Goldblum. I am a fly and I have no idea what
is going to devour me.

Copyright 1995. All Rights Reserved Gerald M. Phillips,
State College, Pa, 22 March 1995

--------------------
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Phillips has now done two books with a colleague
encountered on Email, and he has two more signed. He has also organized an
interpersonal network of quality conversationalists. On June 26, the group
met face to face, and to date, he claims no one has been imperiled. He is
currently working on books with two more people encountered on Email. So
you would think he is optimistic about the whole thing. He is not, he
says.  He remains the pessimist he was in his books, _Intimate
Communication_, _Communication and Human Relationships_, and _Loving and
Living_. He is professor emeritus of speech communication at the
Pennsylvania State University where for 25 years he directed the country's
largest program for the treatment of shyness.