Whftby Foee Proes, Wecfresday, January 24, 1996.,Page, 7 Disinformation highway Readers may have nottced that with great self control, wilpower and puckish wit, we have managed to avoid the Great Information H-ighway. That is about to end. Now. Right away. In this column. Read on. First, definitions. The Inlbr mation Highway, or the Internet, -links hundreds, nay, thousands of computers around the world. Thus, by phoning up one computer near your home, you too can get a busy signal. No, really, you can search for ail kinds of information. Want te know how to build a bomb? Details abound. Want te know more about Parent-Teacher Coundils? With a bit of oeaching you can spend heck, two, three hours and learn only that boolean searches require some inkling of what you're doing. Want te chat with other people by typing messages out on the screen, at your veiy own typing speed, and receiving replies from aiînrods hiding behind pseudonyms? The Internet is the place for you. Seriously: at this very moment, the computer I arn typing this coluînn on is capable of hooking up te the Internet in three different ways, through three different sources. Wehaveseen the future and it is a busysignal *Some people with- no self-control could spend ten, fifteen hours a day surfing the Internet. Without effbr1t, I can now do three timesthat, forty five hours a day. More if I worked at it. .Through chat mode in Newsgroups, a user (Internet people are addicted, so it is aoeurate te refer te theff as user.) - a user can type messages te other users, or reply te messages that other users have left lying around or add te messages that other users have added te messages that other users have left lying around. You get the picture. Chat-mode on Internet makes possible the spread ignorance fromn city te city, country te country,, around the planet, at the speed of light. This new. cultural phenomenon is known as'the Disinformation Highway. 1 Ifs. like playing CB-radio in typing class. Ten-four, little buddy. What it proves is this: make it possible for a computer type te, type something in plain English and you wiIl find that computer types cannot type ta plain English. The other part of the H-ighway is called The Web. This invites user. to connect from computer te computer te computer to computer,, tracing out one giant, planetary web. Then, when you're stuck in the centre, tht. Giant Spider picks up the signaIs and dances lightly across The Web to . . .Oh, it istoo awfuJ torelate. The Internet provides e-mail. By e-mail you can send messages directiy from'your computer te my computer and back again, at the speed of light. As I said, earlier, I amn now hooked into three Internet providers. (Don't ask why.) This gives me not one,, not two, but three e-mail addresses. The trick lies in tht.: each e-mail address has a password. Each one is different. Whtch doesn't matter, since I'vé forgotten them al. This might mean that when I figure out how te get at I MrJXHELL BOUSESOU'ffleAST CORNER 0F DUNDAS ND AIBOL am T a C~1910 This Victorian house was built in the 1870s and was ^demolished in September 1962. The Brewers' Retail store now stands on tis. site. The boards' used to build tht. house were once part of a fence with a poster for the "Great Forepaugh Circus" pasted on them. Whltby Arcivs photo 10 YEARS AGO from the Wednesday, January 22,>ý1986 edition of the >WITBY FREE PIRESS " Nigel Schilling is the 1985 recipient of the Peter Perry Award as Whitby's outstanding citizen. " A $4 million expansion of Whitby's DuPont plant will be completed by tht. summ'er. " The Town'of Whitby i. looking for provincial funding to repair roads in Brooklin. " The l5th annual Wihitby Kiasmn Club'. Skate-a-thon will be held on Feb. 15. 35 YEARS. AGO from the Thursday, January 19, 1961 edition of the wBTY EKLFY NEWS *Norman Gartéhore 18 the new chief operator of Whitbys expanded sewage disposai plant. *Buses parked in downtown Whitby are a traffie hazard. *Whitby residents raised more than $2,100 for the family of Police Céonstable Morley Richardson, who died tn a hockey benefit game last year of a heurt attack. *The firet socal event at the new Anderson H-igh School will be a semi-formal dance on Jan. 27. 100 YEARS AGO from the Friday, January 24, 1896 edfitton of the WH1TEBY CHROMOCLE *Whitby residents are being warned that spearing eels in Lake Ontario is illegal *The Martin Manufactmring Company (buckle factory) iastalled a larger and more powerfu boiler at their works last week. *The brother'of an employee of Hatchs Hardware was caught-breaking in to steal money from the cash register at night. *John Robinson Of TorOnto is cafling for tenders te purchase two stores ta downtown Whitby. 1