“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet” – Abraham Lincoln, from the Gettysburg Address

It was the Summer of 1992. I had laid aside some spare cash for a guitar I had been eyeballing for awhile at my friend’s music store. You would have thought 14 or 15 would be enough. In the world of guitar collecting it was not.

Separate sickness. Separate story.

Around this time, many of my friends and my two brothers had bought computers and were learning to use them. I had not the slightest interest. Bor-ing. I mean really…why?

I was talking with my good friend Dave who was playing in a band with me at the time. He was one of the first to buy one of these metal box monstrosities.

“No! Don’t buy that guitar” he wheedled, “You’ve got too many of them!”

“Get a computer!”

What?

Somehow he convinced me and out I went. Got a 486 HP computer and a printer.

The computer alone cost $1,200. In today’s market it would go for about 75 cents, if the small museums were buying. Try a metal recycling place instead.

It had the massive computing power of a small digital alarm clock. The $500 laser printer I bought with it would only print half the image if it was a photograph.

Sorry, I just had to look it up. That $1,700 in today’s money would be $3,927.

What a bargain! Silly? Dig your first iPhone from way back out of the bottom drawer of your desk. Bang the dust off. What did you pay? How much could you sell it for today? They’ve been doing that to us for a long time.

God has a sense of humor a lot more than you might think. The computer and the internet are the best things ever to happen to humans. Their existence is also the worst catastrophe in all of human history, with nothing else even close.

Once I learned some graphics programs and how to use it, it did make my work life much easier. And email saved on stamps. So I figured, well it does at least have some purpose.

But then came… the internet. It was crude, but an entertaining toy at best.

A drummer I worked with at the time was one of the first people I knew who had an iPhone that connected to the first crude Google. And a born con man.

He would get into a conversation sitting at the bar with strangers, usually about sports and other subjects with a bunch of statistics that Albert Einstein would have trouble memorizing. Paul would maneuver his victim into betting on some obscure question like what player had the most homeruns in 1964. Somehow he was able to access the smart phone with one hidden hand, get the info and earn yet another $20 bill. The first internet entrepreneur.

As the years have gone by, this monster has grown from a puppy to a giant sci fi horror. It’s literally consuming us.
Social media, a cute little way to keep up with friends and family has been transformed into a universe sized hell pit covering the Earth.

With no effort and in less than a minute, you can be “screaming” back and forth with some guy in Argentina, reaching an anger level that you would think started generations ago when his ancestors burnt your family’s village.

You can’t stop progress. I guess.

It’s made life easy for scamsters though. No more having to knock on doors selling monogrammed Bibles or fantastic medicines the doctors don’t want you to know about. Do you know how hard life would be for Nigerian princes if there was no email? The “work from home job” people would have to… well… work from home.

The thing that bugs me though is that we are letting our brains be lazy. We used to have to learn things and know things. The computer wants us to let it handle it all. “Ah, that knowledge thing is not all it’s cracked up to be!” It says. “Too much effort.”

Without looking, tell me the phone numbers of the ten people you talk with the most. I can’t. Many people can’t. Because we let the machine be our memory.

If I forget my phone when I go out and about, I get a bit tense. If I were in an accident or emergency. Even if someone lent me their phone, who would I call?

The only payphones are in museums.

The two newest generations grew up in this quite bizarre world of late. It’s all they know. They look around and think it’s all normal. But they are in deep doodoo. The machine done ate them. Stick a fork in them.

It won’t be long before none of us know anything. The younger people are already way ahead of us. Don’t believe it? Talk to one of them. But not for too long. Your IQ will drop 20 points just standing next to them.

And computers? I still hate them with a passion, even though my home office has three full sized units running, plus two laptops, three pads and a smart phone.

I am doomed.

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.