Why should I care. I'm info-rich. I don't need no stinking AOL. But, I'm info-rich, and I'm saying the info-poor have nothing to fear from their poverty but the threat of being unfashionable, and not every having a shot at sitting in a coffee bar and talking about their stock portfolio over a latte. Still, wouldn't it be nice if everyone could be info-rich, too? I mean, it isn't going to change the balance of world power. Information, in any quantity, is pretty much useless unless used wisely. There isn't a piece of software in the world that can every deliver wisdom.

The only people who are likely to suffer, or benefit, from being info-rich are the middle classes. They get by on the angst of having too much to do, too much to buy, too much to keep up with. People lower down the social scale have real concerns, and people up the scale are too busy feeding off the people lower down the scale to worry about anything much except the occasional bad bit of PR. Hey, if nothing else, DSL has made me more militant, and agitated. I'm thinking, what in hell makes me think that an increase in bandwidth is important, or beneficial? Why am I so excited by it? Is it a sign of how shallow I have become, or is it really because, the damn thing is so cool. I mean, it's fast. Really fast.

Maybe I am just embarrassed by being info-rich while the rest of the world is predominantly info-poor. Typical, bleeding heart liberal stuff, but my politics are so much more misanthropic than that so, I am at a loss to explain it away. It could be sensory overload. Before DSL, I never saw a single banner ad, and avoided most Web site graphics. Now, they're just there, before I can stop them, or move away from them. Blinking, flashing, needling me to click on them. I've got a hundred door-to-door salesmen, and hucksters jumping out at me from every Web page.

Info-rich. Info-paranoid. Info-stupid. Wisdom-poor. Oooh, look at the flashing Web pages. So nice. Pretty colors.

If you ever walk down the breakfast cereal line in a supermarket you'll know how I feel. I mean there's all that chocolate cereal which you might have had when you were a kid, but your wife thinks you need more fiber in your diet so, you have to opt for some grated cardboard while, all the time, you know that Tony the Tiger is within your reach. Shouldn't a man's reach exceed his grasp? Damn right it should. But, it's all too much, just too much.

I like being info-rich because, it beats sitting around waiting for a dial-up connection, if nothing else. But, I don't know if it's any more good for me then switching to digital cable service. Maybe, if the phone companies take over the ISP market this info-rich stuff will become as secondary to one's mental wellbeing as the telephone. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.