Offline...

This week, I've been a reluctant time traveler. My beloved laptop has been rendered temporarily out of commission, and, as a result, I've been cast back into the world of the early '90's -- my hair's gone long and greasy, Pearl Jam's Ten dominates my CD player, chains have attached themselves to my wallet, I'm sprouting flannel ...\nWell, OK, that might be a slight exaggeration -- but I am getting a schooling in how much digital information has changed our world in the past decade-plus.\nThe very earliest origins of the Web date back more than 40 years to the planning for the Defense Department's ARPANet, the Internet's predecessor. But as a fossil old enough to remember mourning Kurt Cobain's death -- and who wasn't a "computer nerd" (yet) -- the Internet started in 1994 with Netscape's commercial release of the "Navigator" browser. Netscape Navigator wasn't the first Web browser or even the first with a graphical user interface (the icons used to control a computer, rather than having to write programming code). It was, however, the first to become really popular. And, in my house, it transformed the modem from a source of perennially boring, text-based screens to the incredible window to the world that we have today -- albeit a very slow-loading window on the world, at that time.\nIndeed, before this week, I would have been hard-pressed to remember what it was like before having a laptop or a broadband connection or university-wide wireless access. But not now. Now, I'm being reminded daily in a hundred painful ways ranging from minor nuisances to major crises. I'm reminded by the fact that I now have nothing to do during TV commercial breaks; by the moments when some question comes to mind, and I realize that I can't immediately look up the answer; by the fact that I now have to worry about bus schedules and buildings' open hours if I want to do my job or even check e-mail.\nI know, I know. The strings of the world's smallest violin weep for me. What I'm getting at, though, is just how dependent we've become on this form of technology in such a short period of time. And how it has changed us. In a Grand Junction, Colo., Daily Sentinel interview with the Webmaster for Mesa State College on Aug. 21 -- imagine finding that reference in the pre-Google days -- the Webmaster explained that he was rearranging the school's Web site because students have "got to be able to find what they want in less than a minute. ... It's got to be explained in less than five minutes." The same day, in a St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press article, the newspaper examined a new trend: nonprofit agencies emerging to help people socialize with their neighbors. And, over this past week, thousands upon thousands have watched Sen. George Allen's racist freak-out on YouTube.\nGood, bad, mixed -- regardless, one has to ask: Where is all this going?