Call me a troglodyte; I'd rather peruse those photos alongside my sweetheart, catch the newspaper on the way to work, and page thorough a real book.

I spend almost as much time figuring out what's wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.

Anyone can post messages to the net. Practically everyone does. The resulting cacophony drowns out serious discussion.

The Internet is a telephone system that's gotten uppity.

What's society going to be like when the kids today are phenomenally good at text messaging and spend a huge amount of on-screen time, but have never gone bowling together?

The virtual community? The word virtual does not mean "virtue." It means "not." When I go to the store and they say: The shirt that you brought in is virtually done. It means it is not done, in the same way that the virtual community is not a community. There is no commitment there. When you log off, you are not a member of it anymore. My flesh and blood community, the sense of knowing my neighbor, knowing the guy across the street, having dinner with the people down the block, getting along with each other and making compromises, that's a genuine community with a commitment.

I sense an insatiable demand for connectivity. Maybe all these people have discovered important uses for the Internet. Perhaps some of them feel hungry for a community that our real neighborhoods don't deliver. At least a few must wonder what the big deal is.