WARNING! Information Overload

Isn't it a great time to be alive? There're Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) flown by pilots from their comfortable chairs at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, viewing computer screens where they target, in real time, insurgents and their refuges in Iraq and Afghanistan--7,000 miles away; "smart" bombs that destroy anything we choose ("surgically"); inter-planetary probes; the aging space shuttle resupplying the ISS; sonic toothbrushes; home pregnancy test kits and quick abortion on demand for all ages; pills for almost any ailment (real or imagined)--with more new ailments being revealed or invented (Restless Leg Syndrome--whatever that is--comes to mind); laser surgery that restores marginal vision; and . . . well, the list is seemingly endless. Truly awesome is the statistic that technical knowledge in the IT spectrum is mounting so fast that it doubles every 18 months (which means, as the kid at Radio Shack taunts me, that what I buy today will be hopelessly outdated in 18 months). As if this fast-moving world weren't enough to try and get your mind around it, there's the fast moving . . .

Internet and its infinite spin-offs (business-card size Apple iPods that record and playback as many as 10,000 songs--I've always longed to have 10,000 songs at my fingertips--the more noise, the better; blog sites where I can read first-hand the travails of spoiled and abused teenagers from Chile to Ukraine). Now add "Google search" that is expanding exponentially, giving us instant facts, photographs, textbooks, news, and opinions. . . oh, yes, endless opinions on any damned subject you never wanted to know about, but now you can--and probably should, unless you want to be happy as an intellectual null. And for the voyeur, he can even view my house or yours with Google's instant satellite imaging. And with Googlle's moon.Google.com you can even peer into the moon's craters to get a close-up feeling of what has always been left to the imagination of earthbound mortals.

Finally, when Google has finished digitizing every known book in print (oh yes, in case you didn't know, the company already has a good start on that mind-boggling project), and when Wikipedia--edited by you, me and millions of others out there--has made most of man's knowledge available at our fingertips, we shall have achieved--whether we want it or not--some kind of intellectual Nirvana.

How are we coping? I don't know about you, but as for me, well, maybe I'm stuck in a prolonged phase of Darwinian evolution, but I don't think I'm adapting all that well. Like a good pal of mine says, "zeros and ones" scare the hell out of him when he realizes they're controlling everything from UAV warplanes to the surgeon's scalpel and the tiniest minutiae about his life. He tries to have as little to do with the "net" as possible. "I'll send you an e-mail," I say. "Just pick up the phone," he retorts unabashedly. I get a little nervous too, whenever I think how fast the zeros and ones are driving me, with scarcely any guidance or reference, into a vast, virtual, and mysterious cyberworld that I'm not sure is completely friendly and which I find I'm not able to control.

Don't get me wrong--unlike my pal who is always inventing new ways to resist assimilation--I actually am in love with"the net." (Or am I simply enamored of it, like a testosterone-driven young man studying a Playboy fold-out?) I now do 99% of my banking and bill-paying on it, and am committing more of my life to it. I've even learned how to make a little money (legally) on it--just enough to let me spring for additional software that those too-damned-smart designers dream up and convince me that I can't do without it. Sometimes I pause and try to take a breather, lest, according to my pal, I become a virtual, helpless prisoner of the net.

The larger aspect of the problem is this: Together with the numerous print magazines I still subscribe to out of a long habit (most of my favorites are also now "online" and have the enormous advantage of eliminating the piles of unread magazines that pile up on my bedside stand and in the john, causing my wife considerable stress when I insist that I must keep these weighty piles, for articles I've yet to read), the Internet has now infected my brain with recurring bouts of "information overload."

Information overload is a seriously debilitating ailment (I don't think the drug companies have yet found a pill to alleviate this condition) that manifests itself in an odd way--in me at least. When my mind has reached information overload, it compensates by turning toward the nostalgic past. It surrenders to a simpler time. Some would tell me, "Hey, you're just getting old--that's what happens in the opening stages of dementia, Alzheimer's, and any stage of senility." At first I agreed with this diagnosis.

But I'm not so sure, because just like when you re-set a tripped fuse or breaker in your electrical circuitry to restore the lights and power to nest, so submitting to the flow of pleasant images from the past--otherwise long overlooked and buried in those creases and valleys of gray matter--seems to re-set the mind back--if not refreshed, at least capable of plowing through the endless flow of information that the net provides. And if I allow myself to (which I do out of courtesy, if not terribly enthusiastic), I can get double and triple doses of worrisome information by opening the e-mails and links that friends and acquaintances send in abundance. And that is likely, in time, to trip my circuits again.

I find those moments of re-setting unpredictable. For example, while recently debating illegal immigration with a couple of Internet correspondents, I struggled for a way to assure them that this flow of mankind from Mexico and Central America has been taking place much longer than Simcox's Minutemen would have us believe.
WHO TH ISueatyourownris WHOOPS!

CIRCUIT-BREAKER TRIPPED:ENTERING A NOSTALGIA ZONE! CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Images of Felipe and Maria come to mind. They were a lovable, caring older couple who showed up every Spring in the 1940s at my stepfather's little "finca" on the outskirts of Rocky Ford, Colorado in the Arkansas River Valley--famous for fine quality cantaloupes and watermelons that lured hundreds of illegals (we called them "migrants"--probably a PC-turn of an otherwise cruel phrase) to tend, harvest, and pack them for the area's truck farm operators.

Felipe and Maria brought the mystery of the planet to my little world in Rocky Ford; while caring for the 5,000 chickens my step dad raised to make some income on the side of his newspaper editing job, these polite, swarthy foreigners taught me phrases and words in Spanish that made me wonder where these strange sounds were uttered--in fact, now that I think about it, Felipe and Maria planted in my psyche my life-long fascination for exploring the world.

But one summer day my little, care-free world changed abruptly. After a long, care-free typical day that was filled with hours of swimming (and getting massively browned after an initial sunburning) in the nearby city reservoir (forbidden, but tolerated, until the community finally built a swimming pool on top of Reservoir Hill), bicycling between my home just outside the city limits and the homes in town of Jim Bill Grimsley, Tommy Warren, Billy Simpson, and Betty St. John (my first "real" girlfriend) and a mid-afternoon Saturday matinee at the local movie, I found myself manacled by the local constabulary. After hopping on my Schwinn tank bicycle (which I had received the Christmas before and was the envy of my pals), I was waving bye to my pals after watching the Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick Tonto shoot it out (in black and white, of course) with the bad guys , when a cop (we were taught to call them "policemen," not the more disrespectful "cops") stopped me for "riding illegally on the sidewalk." So off we went to jail in the paddywagon--the cop, me and my Schwinn.

Being arrested, manacled, and thrown into the hoosegow of our small town at age 12 was a traumatic experience, to put it mildly. My parents returned a couple hours later after attending a journalism convention in Pueblo, just up the highway north of Rocky Ford and, of course, had their tear-drenched, soon-to-become-a-hardened criminal released forthwith (I don't recall if bail was involved or not). Although I never understood the real reason for my arrest until years later*, you may be sure I steered clear of anything that bore a resemblance to a sidewalk. Undoubtedly, this is where I acquired a too-deep "respect" for the law that has lasted up to this day. In fact, although it's embarrassing to admit it here, whenever I'm stopped (rarely) for such a mundane matter as breaking some traffic rule, my throat gets dry and I have to try and control my hands from shaking while searching for my driver's license, title, and proof of insurance.

* It seems my step dad, not one to mince words or fail to take up a good cause, had been bad-mouthing (in his weekly Op-Ed column) the local Ku Klux Klan and the City Council to which, as he explained to me 35 years later, membership was controlled and interchangeable within the local "old boys' club." In the 1940s a small Colorado town of 5,000 souls law, order, and rule-making were all pretty much defined and administered in the hands of like-thinking folks. And because they didn't like to be dissed, the word went out to slap cold iron on me for whatever transgression they could discover--I later learned it was an act that was intended to "send a message" to my crusading newpaperman step dad.

And as if for good measure, presumably for having criticized in his paper's Op-Ed section the poor treatment and low wages meted out to the likes of the many Felipes and Marias who populated our area six months every year, we woke up at midnight shortly after my arrest to Maria's screams (she and Felipe had their own one-bedroom hut near the chicken houses) to find a 10-foot burning cross in our alfalfa field just 50 yards from our house. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SIGH!

-----------RE-SET------------

Ah, I feel much better now-- see what I mean about what happens when my mind gets overloaded? It switches to a simpler, more pleasant time (including the KKK and my early experience with the criminal world) and I'm refreshed, as it were, ready for another round of more e-mails, online opinion pieces, and several bloggers--one of whom will predictably challenge my Weltanschauung, requiring me to defend capitalism against socialism (I thought that was a dead subject after the U.S.S.R. imploded in 1981, until newly minted campus Marxists started popping up recently and began lecturing me on the "newly discovered" wonders of socialism). Then tonight, I'll fall asleep after forcing myself to absorb more bad news in my increasingly large pile of magazines that analyze where our world is headed. This cycle will undoubtedly continue, with new images about "yesterday" soothing my raw psyche. If my circuit breaker doesn't trip, then better send me a bouquet of lilies (the cheapest bunch possible, please).