The People Walking In Darkness Have Seen A Great Light
August 09, 2004
It’s the twenty-first century. Abominations unto the Lord abound and try the souls of men. In recent days, the abomination that has sat like a steel yoke on this Jesuit’s shoulders is the web browser, Internet Explorer. I am new to the World Wide Web, having been pulled “online” by Mr. Stegall who has given me this “blog.” Like all novices I embarked on my journey with hope in the new mode of communication. Hope quickly turned to bitterness, for like all so-called “progress,” this faith in the World Wide Web and its potential for bettering human communication I have heard so much of in recent years is all poppycock. Hype. Spin. Balderdash. Now everyone has a platform from which to speak, and let me tell you, everyone has a lot of nothing to say.
Take Internet Explorer. I understand Microsoft is the biggest computer company and has the most money. It is the Rome of computers, if you will. I say it is more like the Rome of the fifteenth century, filled with corruption and too big for its britches. The biggest company makes the worst web browser, which is also the most popular web browser. (This fills me with such hope for “democracy.”)
Umberto Eco once wrote that MS-DOS and other command line interfaces are Protestant, while Microsoft Windows is “Catholic.” A questionable analogy, to be sure, but I will say Microsoft badly needs a St. Ignatius to set things right. Already it is in danger of usurpation by a protest-ant upstart. I speak of Mozilla, which one of my students directed me toward after hearing of my various woes with Internet Explorer. (That particular day I was bemoaning the software’s lack of ability to change the sizes of text- or rather, the arcane process by which one must perform such a function.) Mozilla has a feature called “Increase Text Size.” And it works. I hear from my student that Internet Explorer does not support the Web Standards either. (This is like Mel Gibson not supporting Vatican II, no?) This very web page, and the New Pantagruel both look better in Mozilla.
We all need standards. And so I have switched to Mozilla, and though I still find the internet to be filled with the worst humanity has to offer, at least the buttons do what they’re supposed to while I am being continually assaulted with the sludge that is internet culture.
This is The People Walking In Darkness Have Seen A Great Light in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: tNP Garners National Attention for its “Irreverence” | Next: Worldview Weekend and the Will to Power | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
Trackback Pings:
TrackBack URL for this entry: