Who Wants To Read About Fly Fishing?

As a technologically sophisticated cyber-boy, I have spent the last two weeks going “on-line,” a procedure very similar to going “on the rack” or “under the knife.”

Why has this been so painful? Because I have been wasting hours and hours of my log-in time downloading files and upgrades over my already obsolete 2400-baud modem which - Oh. I’m sorry. I forgot for a moment that nothing is more stupefyingly boring than computer-talk. It’s right up there with talking about your carp tackle, or your collection of commemorative spoons, or your collection of lunch money found on playgrounds with a metal detector.

By the way, all three of these activities have something in common with going on-line. They are all spectacularly useless time-wasters.

Wait a minute. Going on-line may be a time-waster (especially with my 2400-baud modem), but it’s certainly not useless. It’s a remarkable and revolutionary way of accessing enormous amounts of information. But the subject I want to discuss today is: Why?

Who needs all of that information? Right now my problem is not that I lack information. My problem is that I have too much information. Personally, I’d prefer some peace and quiet.

Now, I can get just as excited as the next guy about information. When I was on-line the other day, I ran into the living room and told my wife excitedly, “I found a home page for the Colorado Rockies, with complete statistics, schedules and a profile of Dante Bichette!”

She looked up from her book, fixed me with a look and said, “You don’t care about the Colorado Rockies.”

“I know! I know!” I said. “But isn’t that great?”

Of course, she was right. I don’t really need a home page for the Colorado Rockies, nor do I need 99.9 percent of the billions of bits of information I can get on the electronic superhighway.

Sure, I get excited knowing it’s there.

But most of us don’t need it and have no idea what to do with it when we get it. It’s just more clutter for our brains.

Most of us have a television. Most of us have a radio. Every single person reading this column right now has a newspaper in their hands. When we need to know a basic and vital bit of information, such as whether we’re expecting a frost tonight, or whether Jimmie Marks won his school board primary, or whether the Mariners are leading the wild card race, we don’t have any trouble getting it. As a culture, we’re not exactly deprived of information.

But there is something that we’re all deprived of, and what little we have of it, we squander. Let me put it as a riddle:

What is it that flies by, runs out and trickles away? What is as precious as money? What is always too short? What is it that everyone tries to save, but never enough?

Time.

And I don’t know about anyone else, but for me the information superhighway is a squanderer of that commodity, not a saver. Let me give you an example.

I was very excited the other day to find a great deal of information on-line about one of my passions, fly fishing for trout. There in front of me were screenfuls of fascinating text about flies, equipment and techniques. I could spend hours reading it all.

But then it occurred to me. When it comes to fishing, information is not what I need. What I need is more time on a stream.

By wasting my time reading about fishing, I was making it less likely that I would be able to go fishing. Welcome to the Information Age.

Now, I do understand the value of having information easily accessible. Knowledge, and the ability to obtain it, beats the heck out of ignorance. It is comforting for me to know that if I ever need to look up a Holy Roman Emperor, the Encyclopedia Britannica has an on-line service.

But we need to keep some perspective about this. Time is the only thing we are granted in this world, and our lives are defined by how we use it.

We need to use our time being with the people we love, playing with our children and our grandchildren, taking hikes, exploring mountains, laying in a hammock with a good novel, writing letters (or yes, e-mail) to friends, traveling to new places, cooking big family meals, and being there when our loved ones need us.

There is nothing wrong with accessing information about rivers. Just don’t forget to go stand in the middle of one sometimes.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review