The Infobahn

     And you thought I-4 was bad...
     
     "Think of the Internet as a highway." 

     There it is again.  Some clueless fool talking about the "Information 
     Superhighway."  They don't know didley about the net.  It's nothing 
     like a superhighway.  That's a rotten metaphor.
     
     Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction.  Suppose the 
     highways were like the net. . .
     
     A highway hundreds of lanes wide.  Most with pitfalls for potholes. 
     Privately operated bridges and overpasses.  No highway patrol.  A 
     couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles.  500 member 
     vigilante posses with nuclear weapons.  A minimum of 237 on ramps at 
     every intersection.  No signs.  Wanna get to Ensenada?  Holler out 
     the window at a passing truck to ask directions.  Ad hoc traffic 
     laws.  Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant- 
     vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 
     9:00.  Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking 
     on a car phone.
     
     AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola 
     victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the 
         ^^^^^^ hahahahahahahahah!!!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits.  
     Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top 
     speed
     of nine miles an hour.  Others burn nitrogylcerin and idle at 120.  
     No license plates.  World War II bomber nose art instead.  Terrifying 
     paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles.  Bumper mounted machine 
     guns.  Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white 
     phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe.  Flatbed trucks cruise around 
     with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic 
     helicopter.  Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with 
     hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.
     
     NO OFFRAMPS.  None.
     
     Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.  
          
     "We shall recognize in this work and in the life which is 
     inseparable from it, the pure and victorious endeavor of a man to 
     recover each instant of his experience from his future death."