149 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
149 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
SPLIT PERSONALITIES ON ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARDS
|
||
|
||
by Rangott Spliekin
|
||
|
||
During my brief visit to the United States in the fall
|
||
of 1987, I was able to study certain specialized cases of
|
||
split personalities. While they are considered harmless and
|
||
perhaps tolerably eccentric by the American psychiatric
|
||
establishment, it is acknowledged that it is a growing
|
||
problem among young technicians.
|
||
|
||
Frustrated by a lack of popular recognition which
|
||
continues to be focused on earners of large income (The
|
||
"bottom line" as it is popularly called), these young
|
||
geniuses are beginning to talk to themselves. But unlike
|
||
the ramblers and murmurers we find here in Moscow, they
|
||
use the technology available to individuals in America:
|
||
the home computer.
|
||
|
||
A network of electronic bulletin boards exists in
|
||
the U.S., connected by commercial telephone lines and
|
||
available to almost anyone who has a computer and a telephone
|
||
connection device known as a "modem." Individual subscribers
|
||
can then sign in and talk to other, similarly uninspired
|
||
individuals. The system was developed for the quick transfer
|
||
of information but has degenerated into a remote, arms-length
|
||
communications system.
|
||
|
||
In fact, anyone who can afford to have their home
|
||
computers occupied most of the time can establish such a
|
||
board with "free" software provided by generous programmers.
|
||
When I suggested to an official of a conglomerate telephone
|
||
company that it was they who created the software to keep
|
||
technicians occupied instead of productive and to increase
|
||
the profits of the telephone company, the charge was denied.
|
||
|
||
But I digress.
|
||
|
||
I interviewed Dr. George Sands of the Institute for
|
||
Abnormal Electronic Behavior in Berkeley and he acknowledged
|
||
that there is a growing problem among young technicians
|
||
(which he insisted on calling "users") as the amount of
|
||
bulletin boards continue to grow.
|
||
|
||
"There are actually more bulletin boards than users
|
||
in the Bay Area [San Francisco and environs] and they kept
|
||
talking and arguing with the same people. Some were clearly
|
||
showing symptoms of boredom. A few clever ones signed on
|
||
these boards under several names, taking on a new persona
|
||
for each name. They would call under one name and answer
|
||
under another name.
|
||
|
||
"In one case, a man in his mid-fifties had as many as
|
||
six personas and possibly as many as eight. One of the
|
||
personas was actually promoted to assistant system operator."
|
||
"How could that be?" I asked.
|
||
|
||
"The operator had never actually met this man. Nor heard
|
||
his voice. In fact," he chuckled, "one of those personas was
|
||
a woman. Now that couldn't happen if he had ever spoken to
|
||
him on a voice line."
|
||
|
||
Dr. Sands dismissed my contention that the bulletin
|
||
board system was dehumanizing, explaining that that was what
|
||
was said about telephones when they were first developed.
|
||
"Americans have too little history to take it seriously. They
|
||
much prefer playing with their tools which they often mistake
|
||
for toys. Ships were redesigned, in the Nineteenth Century,
|
||
for quick, commercial, and sometimes revenue-evading, trips
|
||
to all parts of the world. Soon afterwards, Americans were
|
||
racing them for sport. The home computer is just another
|
||
misused tool."
|
||
|
||
The real danger, he went on to say, is that more
|
||
individuals will become isolated from their fellow men. "Home
|
||
computers are much more entertaining than even T.V. and
|
||
television has created a whole generation of stay-at-homers,
|
||
referred sarcastically by some commentators as 'couch
|
||
potatoes.'" If anything has staved off this horrible
|
||
eventuality, he went on to say, it is the fact that more
|
||
training is required to operate a home computer than a
|
||
television set.
|
||
|
||
At the moment, only "the best and the brightest and the
|
||
most eccentric" are falling prey to this problem."
|
||
|
||
I asked the good doctor how such people can be spotted
|
||
and institutionalized for their own good.
|
||
|
||
He gave the following indications.
|
||
|
||
1. Their homes lack most furniture, having only the bare
|
||
essentials.
|
||
|
||
2. Everything is spotlessly clean except for the television
|
||
set which will have a layer of dust on the screen.
|
||
|
||
3. The bed is never made.
|
||
|
||
4. There will be six or seven phone lines to the home.
|
||
|
||
5. Only computer manuals will be present, no other books.
|
||
|
||
6. The men will be almost universally divorced (no women
|
||
have fallen prey to this yet despite the fact that some
|
||
of the pathological personas are women) or be on the
|
||
verge of divorce.
|
||
|
||
7. Their children, if any, will have run away from home. No
|
||
very young victim has had any children.
|
||
|
||
8. Sexually, they will be inactive. At least, they won't
|
||
reproduce.
|
||
|
||
9. As with alcoholics, they will be scrupulously careful to
|
||
report to their jobs each day but they will be uncreative
|
||
and rarely be promoted to positions of responsibilities.
|
||
Not because of lack of abilities, but because they will
|
||
evade the extra time necessary to accomplish these goals.
|
||
|
||
10. The refrigerator will contain only spoiled potato chips
|
||
and half-opened cans of beers. Many of these users drink
|
||
soft-drinks because of the high sugar content. One
|
||
institutionalized case had not eaten in six days. He was
|
||
found by the police in a small grocery store, after
|
||
closing hours, with open bags of chips and six-packs of
|
||
Cokes lying about, laughing hysterically and trying to
|
||
dial out on the computerized cash register. When they saw
|
||
the thick glasses and the plastic pen holder in his
|
||
pocket, they notified Dr. Sands.
|
||
|
||
The United States government has tried unsuccessfully to
|
||
introduce electronic bulletin boards in the Moscow area so
|
||
our geniuses are similarly engaged in fruitless labor.
|
||
|
||
The great Pavlov once pointed out that to hypnotize
|
||
a chicken, you merely need to draw a chalk line along
|
||
pavement, place the chicken so its legs are on either side
|
||
of the line and it will freeze. Human beings require a
|
||
more complex hypnotic tool and television has served the
|
||
state well over the years.
|
||
|
||
Now, such a hypnotic tool has been found for the
|
||
intelligentsia. It's even got them talking to themselves.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
Translated from PRAVDA
|
||
Translation (c) 1987 by Yves Barbero |