Editor:

The reach and power of the Internet and World Wide Web sites may eventually replace traditional news media – newspapers, magazines, radio and television. It could be that life as we know it, with opposing viewpoints, will be an endangered way of thinking.

What will happen to our sense of community? Computers take away the love we have for one another. The ability to get along with others is lost when we are solely communication by computers. The Internet disconnects us from one another as human begins.

Everybody will be chatting in online chat rooms with people who share their own interests. Everybody will be safe in their own cocoons of words flashing on screens. There will be no eye contact, no handshakes, no body language, no oral sensations, no visionary delights that often stimulate opposite sexes.

People will be devoid of the use of the senses except for the impact of words and information constantly moving on a fixed screen.

One of my concerns is that perhaps we will be encouraging the brain to swell because of such overuse of the mental capacities that in the future the size of people’s heads will increase and their bodies, through misuse, will become smaller. You know the adage “use it or lose it.” It stands to reason if there is not a balance of using the mind and body together, we will have to develop bodies and heads to accommodate this shift in evolution.

There are programs available now for almost everything a person wishes to learn. Perhaps there is one thing they have not been able to improve upon yet, and that is the procreation of the human species. I hate to think about when they solve that with a computer because it seems it might be the only thing left where people will take time to actually touch each other.

We are drifting farther and farther away from each other emotionally in such a highly technical scientific manner that the human touch is becoming an endangered way of life. Maybe we will learn some ways of breaking away from our love affair with computers and come to realize that interaction with human beings can be just as fascinating and rewarding as sitting with eyes glued to the computer screen.

Everything is speeding up, and we have e-mail and fax mail to prove it, and the Internet gives messages faster than you can lick a postage stamp to mail a letter.

My grandmother brain is being pushed beyond its capacity just thinking about computers and I don’t know whether I should stand firm against the onslaught of so much available information because I might not last very long if I got an overload.

My mind is geared only to the slow way of learning, by reading a book one page at a time and getting a slow drip of information. Life in the fast lane of computers could be hazardous to my blood pressure and upset my equilibrium so that I might capitulate quickly into the next dimension.

Inspiration and love are essential to learning and I hope that parents will remember as they are teaching their children the skills of the computer to sprinkle in a lot of hugs and kisses to keep them balanced in the learning process called life.

Jerri Brillhant

Brentwood