The World Wide Wreck

For the past decade, our nation has tightly embraced the World Wide Web. However, overall satisfaction with the Internet of late is plummeting at a faster rate than the fertility of a male Little 500 rider. This has prompted a U.S.-led group's mission to take the Web to the next level with: "Internet 2." \nThe conglomerate is made up of university, industry and government leaders who believe our contemporary Internet is actually more flaw-ridden than an IU Health Center diagnosis. Its main focus is to craft a Net better equipped to handle future advancements in applications. Nonetheless, I hope the creators of "Internet 2" remedy a few of its other glitches while they're poking around in there. Our current Web has several shortcomings that have been known to really ruffle my feathers: \nIt harasses us. When I returned from spring break and checked my e-mail, the 78,000 spam messages in my inbox nearly crashed the Internet worldwide.\nNothing pushes me over the edge quite like unsolicited e-mails. Luckily, my roommates were home at the time. Otherwise, I would've successfully emptied the entire compartment of gooey cleaning solution from our Swiffer WetJet into my mouth. \nIt facilitates addiction. Hand me a credit card and plop me in front of a computer and you've essentially just fed Gizmo after midnight. I go absolutely berserk -- my arms flail and there's an awful lot of screaming. After the dust clears, I notice everything on www.BestBuy.comwith a price has found its way into my virtual shopping cart. Oh, and did I mention all of the gambling sites? You can actually wager on what month Saddam Hussein will be dethroned in Iraq. What kind of sick human being actually places bets on these things? And why did I pick March?\nIt rips us off. Just recently an Arizona couple fled with more than $100,000 from over 500 eBay bidders without delivering any of the promised merchandise. I had the winning bid on Vicki's cabinet from "Small Wonder" almost two years ago, and I'm still disappointed every time the mail comes. \nIt decreases efficiency. The San Diego-based company Websense estimates U.S. companies lose $63 billion a year in productivity courtesy of employees surfing the Net. And as soon as we all graduate into the workforce, I'm confident that together, we can drive that number up even higher. Just look at me right now. I'm sitting here in a lab making fantasy baseball trades and clicking "Check for new mail" every 15 seconds. That girl waiting to use this computer for academic reasons would probably rip her pointy boot off and beat me in the head if only she knew. \nIt promotes laziness. This may be too long ago for some of the younger students to recall, but there used to be a time when people would go to concrete buildings to purchase merchandise. Also, before the Internet, students actually did their assignments themselves. (I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you fall out of your chair like that.) Although I can't complain too much, I only had to shell out five bucks for www.MoistColumns.com to whip this article up.\nIt strips us of our privacy. Cookies enable commercial Web sites to get a hold of our preferences and subsequently customize their advertisements to each user. But I don't think it has been perfected yet because I'm constantly bombarded with ads for dark lipsticks even though I prefer tinted lip balms. I just think it gives my lips a more juicy and natural look.\nLet's just hope "Internet 2" eradicates some of these deficiencies before it busts onto the scene.