How many accidents have there been on the information superhighway? Is it as safe as, say, airline travel? Statistically, there are probably few fatalities.

Yet, I am sure that many people have gotten themselves hopelessly lost in cyberspace only to find their way out hours later, after having neglected their term papers, now due in approximately 10 minutes. Paradoxically, information technology has made aspects of our life easier while complicating our whole life and allowing us less time to enjoy it.

The University has improved network services over the past couple of years, providing us with impressive access roads to things such as electronic mail, network news groups, and a variety of other services that are part of the internet, a worldwide computer network and the backbone of the information superhighway. Anyone who has not yet accessed these services really must. Then, you too can fritter your days away sending E-mail to friends in Zimbabwe and reading computer bulletin boards on topics ranging from nuclear physics to marijuana.

I consider myself fairly computer literate. Yet, in order to keep up with all of the advances on the internet, one would need to make it a full-time job.

Indeed, there are people here at Penn State hired to do just that. The rest of us spend our time exploring, ferreting around like "gophers," and we still get behind the game. I feel like I'm driving the 'net in a rather plush Cadillac, enjoying the scenery. Meanwhile, the internet version of PennDOT keeps building new roads, and people whiz by me in their Mazda Miatas with their hair blowing in the wind!

The newest thing now (as far as I know) is the Worldwide Web, an ambitious project with the goal of making the entire body of human knowledge available on the internet. I don't know about you, but I think that's a lot of information. Of course, the creation of new knowledge is proceeding at alarming rates, so the Worldwide Web will never be complete. As it is, you can spend hours trying to find a piece of information on there.

For those with self-control, I guess the internet can be useful. It will make us all into one global community. I recently read that Antarctica was just hooked up to the internet. I guess scientists who are stationed at the South Pole base during the Antarctic winter are literally trapped there for nine months of the year. They can't even get airlifted out.

This new internet connection will not only allow them to communicate with scientists around the world, but it will also allow them simply to experience some of normal society. Could you imagine being trapped in a little room with 50 below zero weather outside for nine months?

Another feature of the information revolution is that it allows computer companies to become exceedingly rich. Every year or so a new, more powerful computer chip hits the market, and the computer that you paid $2000 for two years ago is soon worthless.

For years, leading chip manufacturer Intel kept pumping out new versions of its popular chip, which is the heart of most personal computers. Each new chip could do more calculations even more accurately and faster than the chip before it. Of course, everyone wants the new version, so they throw out their old computers and buy new ones.

I think Intel ran out of improvements to make, but they still needed more money. So, they introduced the Pentium chip, which, as some of you may know, does math less accurately than the previous chip. Everyone threw out their old computers and purchased new ones with the Pentium in it. Now, engineers are complaining because it ruins the calculations they use to build 747s. I hate complainers like that.

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier and give us more free time. Let's do an economic analysis. I buy a computer for $2500 of my hard-earned money. Two years pass and this computer is worth less than yesterday's newspaper. So, I throw it out and buy a new one for $2500.

But this is OK, because every time I do this, I am fueling the global computer industry, providing jobs for people who make the computers and all of the materials that go into them. This means more money gets circulated and we all live better, right?

What about me? I now have to work 80 hours per week so I can afford to buy computers every two years, own and operate my cellular phone, pay for my digital satellite television with 150 channels, and take trips to the Bahamas to escape from the technology and all of the pressures it has introduced into my life. The free time I do have is wasted filtering through useless but compelling information stored on the internet and the Worldwide Web.

Somehow, I have a feeling that there have been fatalities on the information superhighway, and they are stress-related.