IJMC - The Information Superhighway

I don't know who came up with this, but I like it. Granted, I'd be afraid 
to drive on it, but hey, gimme my surfboard and a semiautomatic and I 
think I might be able to make do. At least I'm hoping to find out about 
the surfboard sometime next week, as the IJMC will be down for a week and 
a half while I go on vacation to hot springs and sunny beaches. But it 
will be back, just in time to let you know what havoc the Olympics are 
wrecking upon Atlanta (ok, so I'll miss Opening Ceremonies, that's what 
TV's for!). Good enough. Read on!                                   -dave

P.S. This was definately written before all of the corporate entities 
showed up driving those tractor-trailers led and followed by pickup 
trucks with yellow lights and "Wide Load" signs, only these trailers take 
up all of the highway instead of two or three lanes...and they've got 
really ugly billboards in narrow strips telling you nothing along the 
sides...(btw, if any of them want to pay to sponsor me...<grin>)




"Think of the Internet as a highway."

There it is again.  Some clueless fool talking about the "Information 
Superhighway."  They don't know didley about the net.  It's nothing 
like a superhighway.  That's a rotten metaphor.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction.  Suppose the 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.  A minimum of 237 on ramps 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 on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other 
cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits.  Some are 
built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top speed 
of nine miles an hour.  Others burn nitrogylcerin and idle at 120.

No license plates.  World War II bomber nose art instead.  Terrifying 
paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles.  Bumper mounted machine 
guns.  Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white 
phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe.  Flatbed trucks cruise around 
with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic 
helicopter.  Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with 
hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.

NO OFFRAMPS.  None.

Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.