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!!
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