Can They Hear You Scream In Cyber Space?

We’ve been pigeon-holed - again. Like all the good folks living outside the Internet, off the Infobahn, and in rural space instead of cyberspace, I’ve joined the victims of techno-redistricting. I now live on the border of “C World.”

After a recent on-line conference, the entire globe was redistricted into the technology haves and have-nots. “A World” people - technophiles and the computer cognoscenti - fax, cruise the “net,” shop the waves, e-mail and electronically chat around the world.

Most of the rest of us have been sorted into “B-World” status. We use computers and modems as tools for our trade. I enjoy the speed and accuracy of my word processor, but we keep our family room our “chat room,” and reserve relationships to people with faces. Too many people retreat to the sad, lonely clatter of keyboard keys instead of getting out and doing something. We don’t encourage computer games or on-line chat rooms because of what they do and don’t do. Isolating and insulating children (and adults) from the real world, they don’t encourage imaginative problem-solving, interactive play or verbal communication skills.

Those at the bottom of the technical totem pole live in “C World.” To be honest, I envy C World. People there don’t use computers, can’t afford them, don’t care about them, or don’t know what they are. Bosnian refugees are C World. So are Somali warlords, Chinese peasants and Andean Indians. Ethnic minorities struggling in urban gulags exist in a twilight of cyberspace. Mother Theresa is C World. Plato, Chief Joseph, Leonardo da Vinci, Jonas Salk and Rosa Parks - all C World.

Is there a bias against the C World? Do we need systems that further divide us? Is it “everyone else” who struggles with frozen pipes and icy driveways, or do we all need help balancing teetering budgets, raising healthy children and saving faltering relationships? Computers can’t do this. They can’t nurture our thirsty souls. Simple, heartfelt human effort can. Something of genuine value can be created, shared, and bestowed, but only through brain-work, heart-work and hard-work.

They can’t pigeonhole lovers. Those who create, nurture, encourage, and heal their families and countries, by their very nature defy being rammed onto the spindle. It’s our world.

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion pages. To submit a Your Turn column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write Your Turn, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.