Other Views: Internet's allure can lead to harm

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- As I logged on to http://www. My $31,000 education.com, it hit me. The Internet is good for more than letting 14-year-olds access porn, or ordering alligator skin purses from Madagascar. The Internet is a useful tool, which has powerful effects on our society. It is what fire was to our Cro-Magnon ancestors: pretty cool and useful, but can really burn the hell out of you. We must make sure that we don't rely too heavily on the Internet for learning, or we will get burned.

As our world grows increasingly smaller and therefore more competitive, we as students of an esteemed educational institution must demand that our education not be lost to the Internet.

As an incoming freshman, I expected and hoped that teachers would take advantage of the new online opportunities. The possibilities are more open than Denny's - class notes, announcements, questions asked and answered, and even research.

I was not let down. In fact, it is more than I expected. It's almost as if this institution is relying on the Internet as a crutch to aid students disinterested in books. Whatever happened to those things? Sure, we have to buy them. Sure we still have libraries bigger than Pavarotti's belly after a meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet. But it seems as if we have lost our focus on learning. Education should be absorbed, not clicked into our consciousness.

Don't get me wrong. I love the convenience of sitting at a computer, typing in a Web address and answering questions for my lab. I love being able to learn about a topic from the comfort of my apartment. I even love the fact that all of this information is out there, accessible and free. But despite all this convenience, don't we lose something, like the human touch so necessary to learning? Megabytes can never replace a teacher.

It has been said that computers are only as smart as the people using them do, but is that so true nowadays? When my little sister can get online, go to Yahoo!, type in "Anarchist Cookbook" and receive recipes for bombs, we must question how smart you really have to be to work a computer.

Additionally, if the Internet takes over education, what's to stop people from relying on it to conduct many other kinds of business? This sets us up for disaster, as demonstrated a few months ago when a major satellite stopped working. Millions of pagers, cell phones and other communication systems went down. The same thing can happen to our monetary accounting and banking systems now accessible to millions of people over the web. We'll see what happens on Jan. 1, 2000, when the Y2K bug will supposedly ravage computer systems all over the world.

This is certainly not a new theme, as fiction writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell have preached against technology and our dependency on it for years.

Ray Bradbury warned us about neglecting books in "Fahrenheit 451." If we neglect them too much and rely on the unchecked, unregulated information provided to us on the Internet, then we create a society where we are "dumbed down" by convenience. We cannot afford this. We should not support this. Use your e-mail, surf the web, have a great time. But take it with a grain of salt, and don't forget Bradbury's message.

I think educational institutions should teach how to use the Internet, and teach through the Internet, but with reasonable limits. The Internet is a powerfully efficient business tool, like the Philips screwdriver of a professional toolbox, so we should encourage use to a certain extent. We should also teach how to find information in cyberspace, but we must not forget our roots.

Since Gutenberg invented the printing press, the world has never been the same, and I think it is a shame we are slowly but surely throwing this legacy out the door.

Of course, if you disagree, I encourage you to e-mail me.