NetChurch - Go forth unto the masses!

Are you doing your duty to spread the technological gospel to the uncomputerized masses?

You are probably aware of the fact that there is a diminishing handful of wayward Luddite souls who are nothing like you: They do not revel in your electropurian addiction to all things digital. They have no idea of what RSS is, they don't give a rat's knuckle about Joost, or the iPhone, or the new iMac, or Ruby on Rails, or new Linux distros. They couldn't care less about Gmail, they have never seen Chocolate Rain on YouTube, and they certainly have no use for Web 2-point anything.

Wikipedia sounds less like an informational site and more like one of the following:
A) The definitive guide to pagan worship
B) The science of weaving bamboo strips into Herman Miller chairs
C) A worm-like breakdancing seizure done by limber suburban hip-hop kiddies

Yes, we all know them: These are the anti-technology souls who choose to get their news eons (meaning a 1/2 hour of latency or more, in Internet time) after the fact in an archaic newspaper, or laughably, from television, when it is waaaay too late to be among the first five bloggers to write and post a pithy article about it on Reddit.

They are the proud, liquid crystal-wary who use a dull, uninteresting #2 pencil to illegibly scribble a shopping list on small scraps of dead, pulverized tree pulp instead of efficiently typing it up and printing it out on unbleached reams of eco-happy company-supplied printer paper (and probably reprinting because you forgot to add something), or better yet, as a list on your .02 oz cel phone (not including battery).

These are the people who would rather clutter their minds with all of their soft-shelled, warmed-over ideas instead of doing as you do: simply getting a free account on Backpack and leaving these hidden gems to germinate, happily waiting for you to cultivate and shape them into the next Google-esque startup from any silicon endpoint in the world. Thus, their minds turn into that decrepit house on your block with the crazy-haired lady who herds feline cattle (did you catch that pun? Did you catch the second?).




These, friends, are the misinformed who would make corporate policies that deter Internet use while on the job, claiming that it is not productive. To which I say: "Not productive? You think all this typing I'm doing right now is not productive? How do you think I achieve 110 words per minute to type things for YOU? By practicing on your stinking policies and procedures manual that you won't even read? You want to see productivity? I got your productivity right here!"

We are also very good at being privately aggressive behind the veil of anonymity. But that is a story for another time.

Ya' feel me, my DSL D-Diddy Dawgs?
Technophobes in today's world are like ancient untethered glass floats that bounce freely like so much digital driftwood. In fact, I dare say they live virtually stress-free lives because of all of the work we have done on their behalf, ultimately to free their spirits from the shackles of daily minutia through improved technological efficiency.

For example, they do not understand the sheer amount of stress that you might be under each minute in front of your keyboard, trying to add your flakes of information to the Web's singular commodity: pure unadulterated data. From your den of binary wisdom, you strain under the weight of your corner of the Internet, upholding society by means of a fragile thread of conductive wire.

These beneficiaries of your suffering will never know the panic of your DSL line going down while uploading an update via FTP, or in the midst of emailing your resume ("Do I resend? But what if they got it - then I'm sending it twice? Does that look too desperate? Will they think I have control issues? Or I'm just an idiot? What do I do? Is it too late to do anything? Screwed screwed screwed...."); They do not know the torturous mental anguish endured when you are forced to press the reset button on your modem for an excruciatingly long 30 seconds (causing a horrible disfiguring of your digit), and then wait for the blasted blinking light to go solid, and then reboot the computer, all to no avail.

They have never interacted with an excessively polite, heavily accented tech support person in the Philippines, who, reading from a 3-ring training binder, tells you that your precious connection will come back if you will only, "unflug your pone line prom the wall and the modem, plip the cord ober end por end, and reflug it, you should be fack online. Can you hold flease sir while I beripy this with my suferbisor?" (And unbelievably, it works).

And sadly, they do not know the restful, simmering afterglow that breaks through the clouds when your Internet connection finally comes back online, with popurls.com happily bounding back to your screen, crushing and relegating that infuriatingly useless "contact your administrator" message to virtual purgatory. Let the light shine down on thee.

Yes, you know what mental heroin feels like without ever picking up a needle. And you suffer this addiction, not for yourself, but for the good of all. You suffer, for them.

Can't we all just get....Online?
So the question is this: How do we, the hedonistic band of Internet brethren and sisthren, bring them into the digital fold?

There are many arguments that can be used, but none more powerful I think than very simply this: Don't they understand that what you do is for the good of humanity? That one day, through your unyielding virtual effort, you will herald the news near and far in fractions of nanoseconds that each and every child in the world is now equipped with a crank-driven computer which has the power to destroy the social strata that has bound the oppressed since the dawn of man?

Do they not see that the future is nigh? That the Singularity is no longer the stuff of quacks, but it is the veritable new fabric of space and time?

In other words, dear progeny of the forward slash, we suffer this fate for...The Children. Yes, it is for the smallest, most innocent among us that we slave as we do. And we shall continue. With every online game we engage; With every trite description we post of a blog article referencing a news article that was rehashed from a newsfeed from an unknown source; With every hardware upgrade and software patch that we selflessly risk our virtual lives for; We, shall remain, faithful.

I am composing a list of the top 10 ways to persuade these uncomputerized resistors to come over to where the world is safe, clean, and orderly. And I'm looking for suggestions.

In the mean time, I offer you this inspirational quote that was derived from our Father, Phillip K. Dick, or Father Dick, as we, the congregation, may call him. Paraphrasing from the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly, always remember:

"there are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who are addicted, and those who haven't tried it."


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