FileTitle: Prose2018.html
Category: Humor
Type: Prose
Description: Internet as an Information Superhighway
"Think of the Internet as an Information Superhighway"

There it is again: Some clueless fool talking about the "Information
Superhighway." The internet is nothing like a highway. Suppose the
metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose highways were like the
net. A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for
potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway
patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500
member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. 237 onramps at every
intersection. no signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window
at a passing truck to ask directions. Ad Hoc traffic laws. Some lanes
would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense
on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just
shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone. AOL would be a
giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims throwing dead
wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been
assembled at home from kits. Some are 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines
with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitroglycerine and
idle at 120. No license tags.

No Offramps.

Now THAT'S the way to run a Highway system!!