If you are at all like me, you’re hooked. Getting online, sending and receiving email, transferring files and participating in discussion groups are quickly becoming essential parts of your everyday life. Before I shower or dress each day, before I eat breakfast, before I brush my teeth or even comb my hair, I feverously check my various email accounts for new mail. If I get email, the day usually starts off on a good note. I feel important, useful, respected—and heck—even liked. If no voice sings out “You’ve got mail!” I inevitably feel a little dejected. It’s really not an ego thing, though. Being online  is all about being connected to a larger whole. 

Online accessability has certainly become much more mainstream lately. With easier and cheaper access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, it seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Even your local radio station and hardware store are likely to have their very own Web home pages. And it is absolutely marvellous that you can send off a letter to your Uncle George—half way across the world—within a matter of minutes. Email is far cheaper than the postal service; and more often than not, much more reliable.  

I currently have America Online, eWorld and Internet accounts; I check my mail several times a day; and I often browse through the world news postings.  More importantly, however, I subscribe to a few local bulletin board services (BBSs). Your average local BBS offers a very different experience than a monolith like eWorld or AOL.  A local BBS is often a home; you know people not just by their names, but by their personalities. You feel as if you are part of a small, wonderful community. You feel loved.  Don’t get me wrong—I couldn’t survive without my AOL account—but nothing compares to a small BBS, where everybody knows your name.

Without my modem, I would certainly have a much less interesting social life. My modem allows me to spend long and boring evenings gabbing with electronic friends on local BBSs. ‘Chatting’, as such communication has come to be known, takes on a dynamic of its own. Though you are simply typing back and forth to an unseen person, it is a great deal more involved than it first appears. If I had my way, interpersonal communications would be restricted to online chatting. The partial anonymity of a chat reduces your apprehensions, often making it much easier to express your true feelings. And if someone is annoying you, you can simply “hang up” on them and not feel guilty about it. If you have a change of heart, you can always tell the person that your computer crashed. (Just ask a certain MacSense Editor how often I’ve used that excuse.)

I perpetually spend hours and hours online at a time; and for the most part, not really accomplishing anything. Sure, I may have downloaded a great new shareware game or two, or read and post a few messages about pet grooming or the previous night’s X-Files episode. But most of my time online is just spent goofing off. Escapism? Perhaps. Addiction? Absolutely. A day cannot go by without me getting my ‘fix’ of the electronic netherworld. Everyday’s an adventure: a new journey, a new discovery, a new realization. All from the comfort of my own home.

Though cyberspace may have once been the domain of computer nerds and other socially challenged individuals, it is today a vast melting pot of people from all over the world and from all walks of life. In cyberspace you are not judged by your physical appearance. How you look, how much you weigh, and the color of your skin simply do not matter. You are judged by what you say, and how you say it. Your prowess with the written word is all that matters. 

And I, for one, am pickled tink. 

Renzo Piche is an avid Macintosh technician and can usually be found hounding local Apple Dealers and Representatives for Apple clothing. Mr. Piche loves to hear from fellow Mac enthusiasts. Drop him a line at RPiche@aol.com.