• Slaves to the machine (by Elizabeth Weise in USA Today, Feb 18, 1999):

Computers were supposed to liberate us and make life easier, but instead they’ve enslaved us. Too hard to use and prone to inexplicable problems, they’re not labor-saving devices -- they’re a whole new kind of labor unto themselves. . . .

PCs provide what psychologists call “intermittent reinforcement,” says [Clifford] Nass, a [Stanford] professor who studies people’s relationship to machines.

“If your car doesn’t turn on, you’re stuck. If your toaster oven doesn’t toast, it’s broken. But computers can half-work. You feel like you’re making progress,” he says.

Conspicuously absent from the ranks of those telling horror stories are Macintosh owners. Not that things don’t go wrong with Macs, but because Apple controls both the hardware and the operating system, there’s less chance of problems.

. . . and note that the iMac, from last August, seems promising.

• Are companies like Geocities truly “building communities”? (by Janelle Brown in Salon, January 1999):

GeoCities may call itself the “largest and fastest growing community of personal Web sites on the Internet,” but there’s no community to be found in my neighborhood.

“Community” is quite possibly the most over-used word in the Net industry. True community -- the ability to connect with people who have similar interests -- may well be the key to the digital world, but the term has been diluted and debased to describe even the most tenuous connections, the most minimal interactivity. The presence of a bulletin board with a few posts, or a chat room with some teens swapping age/sex information, or a home page with an e-mail address, does not mean that people are forming anything worthy of the name community.

. . . there's a breakdown between what's being hyped and what's actually happening at these sites: Few of the members actually seem to be communicating with one another. Most people, it seems, just want a place to slap up a picture of their cat.

• Tracking Melissa's alter egos (by Luke Reiter for ZDNet, today, April 1, 1999): David L. Smith, from Monmouth County, New Jersey, was arrested for releasing the Melissa e-mail virus. IF you get an e-mail with a Subject line starting "Important Message From," and then with a message body of "Here's that document you asked for. Don't show anyone else ;)" - don't open the attachment! Typical security problem from Microsoft Word and Outlook.

• Click Here for Less Confusion (by J.D. Biersdorfer in the NYT, Dec 13, 1998):

Web designers today are trying to pare down their pages, creating sites that are logical as well as luscious. . . . “Web surfers have a very short attention span, and considering how slow modems are today, it’s a challenge to attract someone quickly,” says Jeffrey Veen . . . “We try to grab someone’s attention in less than 10 seconds. That means using almost no complex images -- just text and simple colors for visual cues. . . What many designers forget is they need to explain to their audience how to use a page, as well as how to read it.”