Last night I finally took the plunge.
After many months of cajoling by my siblings and my offspring and my colleagues, I unplugged my telephone, clicked the little plastic jack into my laptop’s modem and signed up for 15 free hours of America Online.
For three frustrating hours I was “online,” as we computer whizzes put it. What that means is that I was trapped in front of a flickering monitor watching unfamiliar icons flashing before my eyes, hurrying through each new screen lest I dawdle away my free AOL time.
All sorts of new and exciting vistas awaited me in this realm of electronic knowledge. The whole world was at my fingertips, just as I had been told. When I clicked on the button that was supposed to admit me to the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, suddenly I was on the Web. You know. The World-Wide one!
At least, I was almost there. First I would need to “download” some web-browser software, AOL informed me on my screen. It would only take 8 minutes, they assured me, and the time spent downloading was free.
“Why not?” I thought. “I’m going to want to cruise the Internet with the big boys. And 8 minutes ain’t much on a goof-off night like this.” 45 frustrating minutes later the software finally was in place on my hard drive. Except for one file that thousands of my new online comrades also seemed to want that same night. And, AOL now confided, I had to have that file to access the medical journal I wanted to read to start with. I’d just wasted an hour.
Chagrined but not conquered, I reluctantly exited that online venue and romped off into another. By now I knew for the first time why all my friends were complaining about the endless minutes spent loading AOL’s elaborate 3.0 menu graphics. For most of my first three hours online I watched as expanding bar graphs told me repeatedly that some art I didn’t really care to see was 43% loaded.
My online buddies assure me it will get better. But I have new sympathy for anybody who dives into a complex field where they’ve never navigated before. Such as the hapless seeker who opens a Bible for the first time. His first encounter with Numbers 26 or Ezekiel 38 must be every bit as bewildering as my first excursion into the instruction-less world of e-mail on AOL.
“It will get easier every time you use it,” my friends assure me. So will Bible reading, if you don’t give up before you find the good stuff.