===========================================================
Norman N. Holland                            Ver. July 18, 1994
Department of English
University of Florida
Gainesville FL 32611-2036 U.S.A.
 
 
The Internet Regression
 
Norman N. Holland
 
Talking on the Internet, people regress.  It's that simple.  It
can be one-to-one talk on e-mail or many-to-many talk on one of
the LISTs or newsgroups.  People regress, expressing sex and
aggression as they never would face to face.
 
Think about it.  Current estimates say 23 million people
communicate on the Internet from most of the nations on the
globe, and that number is increasing at 12% a month.  And all
this just grew like Topsy, with no one planning or controlling
it.  Here is one of the extraordinary technological achievements,
one of the great _human_ achievements, of our century.  But _homo
sapiens_ reverts to primitive, childish behavior.  Why?
 
There are three major signs or, if you will, symptoms of this
regression.  The one Internet primitivism that everybody talks
about is "flaming," flying into a typewritten rage at some
perceived slight or blunder.  "Everywhere I went in the
newsgroups," writes John Seabrook in _The New Yorker_, "I found
flames, and fear of flames" (1994, 70).  No wonder.  Seabrook had
written a friendly piece on Bill Gates, the powerful president of
Microsoft.  In the "profile," he made a point of the way he and
Gates conducted their interview on e-mail.  This is what appeared
on Seabrook's screen (courtesy of a certain computer columnist):
 
;pxCrave THIS, asshole:
 
Listen, you toadying dipshit scumbag . . . remove your head from
your rectum long enough to look around and notice that real
reporters don't fawn over their subjects, pretend that their
subjects are making some sort of special contact with them, or,
worse, curry favor by TELLING their subjects how great the ass-
licking profile is going to turn out and then brag in print about
doing it.
 
Forward this to Mom.  Copy Tina [the new publisher of _The New
Yorker_] and tell her the mag is fast turning to compost.  One
good worm deserves another.;ex
 
This last was a veiled threat, since a "worm" is a computer virus
and the "flame" might have caused damage to Seabrook's data and
programs.
 
A second primitivism on the Internet is sexual harassment, crude
invitations to people about whom one knows no more than their
online signatures (which may well be "gender-benders" that hide
the sex of the speaker).  It happens even in professional or
intellectual groups, but the "chat" groups are the worst.  Women
complain that going into chat mode can feel like a walk past a
construction site or a wrong turn down a dark street (Span 1994).
But males are not the only offenders.  Women also proposition
men.  As one of the subscribers to my list-conference PSYART
described it,
 
;pxOnce, while in a chat, I changed my nickname to a female
moniker.  A woman (and I use the noun to refer to what she
presented herself as--not that I have any reason to doubt her,
but who knows on IRC [Internet Relay Chat]) . . . left the
conference, and told some people there was a new woman on the
net.  She returned to the conference, and many men joined.
Several began sending me private messages suggesting various (and
graphic) sexual acts.  One in an adjacent state wanted to meet me
in person.  None of these people ever sent me e-mail later,
perhaps because I revealed my real gender after a while--at which
time the harassment ended.  This particular conference was not
one of the sexually-oriented ones--just an IRC group we had
formed that night.  What began as a joke proved to be quite an
education.
 
On another occasion, while using my natural and usual IRC/real
identity, someone claiming to be a young woman joined a
conference--again, not a sexual interest group--and began sending
me private, explicit messages. I hadn't thought about it until
now, but it seems as though her advances were less crude,
although every bit as direct (Sougstadt 1994).;ex
 
The third symptom of regression--and you may not consider it a
regression at all--is the extraordinary generosity you see on the
Internet.  The one comment you hear over and over again about
online communication is the openness, the sense of sharing and,
mostly, tolerance.  Total strangers will give up hours of their
time to send one another research data.  Even goods.  A lawyer
was moving from Boston to Washington.  A fire on the van
destroyed his books, and he posted a list of what he had lost on
the Internet.  "Every day for six months I was receiving books in
the mail from people I'd never met" (Rubin 1994).  "People on the
network share information about everything from how to run their
computers to how to make cheesecake.  Most of the people who post
are trying to be helpful, even when they disagree" (Golden 1994).
Most dramatically, on the Internet, there are support groups for
recovering alchoholics, drug addicts, and smokers.  People with
suicidal tendencies tenderly share ways in which they ward off
the temptation (Wright 1993).
 
Another side to this openness is what Kristina Ross has called
"identity play" (1994).  People try out new ways of being, often
in very playful ways: different professions, the opposite gender,
altered self-descriptions.  There is a sense that `it doesn't
matter,' a feeling of invulnerability.
 
At the same time, this openness involves heightened
vulnerability.  This is the way _New Yorker_ writer John Seabrook
describes how it feels to be flamed:
 
;pxThe flame seemed to put a chill in the center of my chest
which I could feel spreading slowly outward.  My shoulders began
to shake.  I got up and walked quickly to the soda machines for
no good reason, then hurried back to my desk.  There was the
flame on my screen, the sound of it not dying away; it was
flaming me all over again in the subjective eternity that is time
in the on-line world. . . .  the technology greased the
words . . . with a kind of immediacy that allowed them to slide
easily into my brain (1994, 70-71).;ex
 
In short, communication on the Internet has its plusses and
minuses.  The plusses are the generosity and openness.  The
minuses are aggressive flaming, sexual attack, and increased
vulnerability.  I think they are two sides of the same coin: sex
and aggression in positive and negative, active and passive,
forms.  Both begin because of a lack of inhibition--a regression.
But what lures us into this regression?
 
 
 
The simplest answer is, the computer itself.  To understand
interpersonal behavior on the Internet, we need to look at the
fantasies people have about their computers.
 
It is already a cliche to say that the computer extends and
expands the brain.  What the car, the boat, the gun, the airplane
do for the body, the computer does for the mind.  In fact, people
use metaphors of body activity to describe the mind working on
the computer, like this British user: "It exercises the mental
faculties . . . . it keeps my mind alive and sprightly" (Shotton
1989, 207).
 
In this pseudo-physicality, men easily get into mine-is-bigger-
than-yours games.  My hard disk, my chip, my screen is bigger or
faster or newer or more powerful.(Kantrowitz 1994, Turkle 1984).
In psychoanalytic terms, men's fantasies about computers are
"phallic."  In this context, "flaming" is a bit like giving other
drivers the finger from inside a car.  Driving is a phallic
activity like computing, and the driver identifies _him_self
(usually himself) with his machine, feeling secure inside his
steel cocoon as the computer "driver" is made safe by distance
and anonymity.  The context is aggressive and competitive, as men
are with their computers (Irvine 1994, Cobb 1993).
 
Since fantasies about computers tend to the phallic, it should
come as no surprise that men and women respond differently to
computers.  Women, unlike men, generally think the machines are
just meant to be used, like the microwave or the vacuum cleaner.
"It's a tool, like a screwdriver," one woman writes to the
_Washington Post_, not intending (I assume) any symbolism.  "I
pick it up.  I expect it to work.  While computers can be more
`fun' than most screwdrivers, in general, when I turn my computer
on, I expect it to work.  Period" (Walker 1994).
 
It should also come as no suprise that people feel anxious about
that phallic computer.  `Will the computer go berserk?'  `Will it
blow up if I press the wrong button?' are common imaginings
(Simons 1985, 22).  "People are afraid they'll break something,"
writes one woman.  "Computers are like dogs--they know when
you're scared of them" (Dowell 1994).  Turkle (1984) contrasts
people for whom the computer is just an instrument and people for
whom it is magic.
 
Alongside these magical fantasies of power and dominance and
size--and castration--are quite different phenomena: computer
dependency and addiction.  Some people are powerless to resist
the pleasure of fooling around with the computer.  They see it as
an alluring alternative to ordinary life.  They will even risk
their marriages for the pleasure of hours and hours of "working
out" on their computers or "surfing" on the Internet.
 
Why is it so pleasurable as to be addictive?  According to a
British study, computer addicts--these are not only people hooked
on networking but on programming, gaming, and even work on their
computers--saw computers as a soothing alternative to the human.
These possibly schizoid types found computers logical,
predictable, and non-judgmental, but humans illogical, erratic,
and critical.  They simply preferred computers (Shotton 1989,
253, 264; see also Weizenbaum 1976).  Computer addicts avoid the
frustration of dealing with an illogical world of human beings by
retreating to a relationship in which they find their own values
of logic and dispassion.
 
Furthermore, not only is the machine human, it is a human just
like me.  Computer addicts have a narcissistic relationship with
their machines.  The computer becomes a mirror image of
themselves.  And indeed, don't most of us prefer magazines,
newspapers, television programs--and friends--that confirm our
own values? (Shotton 1989, 250-52).
 
When programming, the computer addicts are working with an ideal
partner who understands them fully.  They feel toward their
machines as toward a true friend.  This friend will not withdraw
if a mistake is made.  This friend will try to be an ever-
faithful helpmate (Shotton 1989, 167).  And this friend is male.
 
Most computer users talk to their computers and give them
nicknames, as other people do boats, cars, airplanes (for
example, Enola Gay), and even guns (Big Bertha).  But where the
nicknames for cars, boats, airplanes, and guns are usually
female, nicknames for computers are invariably male.  In an
American study, subjects "made a total of 358 pronoun references,
variously referring to the computer as `it,' `he,' `you,' `they,'
(and even `Fred')--[but] never as `she'" (Scheibe and Erwin
1980).  In Shotton's British study of 75 computer dependent
people, they all, male and female, gave their computers male
nicknames.  In fact one woman in that study said right out, "He's
the man in my life."  In that same study, a male respondent
reported that his computer was male ("my mate Micky"), but, he
said, "I always refer to my dual disk-drive as female--she's
lovely" (Shotton 1989, 194-195).  Notice: his active, powerful,
intelligent, logical computer was male like him, while his
obedient, passive, receptive disk-drive was female.^1  Let's not
forget, in this connection, that in 1982 _Time_ magazine named
the personal computer its _Man_ of the Year.
 
In other ways the computer plays the role of a parent.  It
rewards its human's good behavior--the program runs--but it does
not punish.  The machine does not judge its user as inadequate.
Rather, faced with poor performance on the part of its human, the
computer just ignores it and waits patiently for the next input.
The computer is like a parent who has high hopes for you but
rewards your achievement, even if it is less than optimum.  The
machine always holds out more goals to strive for, but these
goals are realistic, and it's up to you whether to go for them or
not (Shotton 1989, 167).  If the computer is a demanding parent,
it is also a very permissive one.
 
It is permissive in yet another way.  It is totally anonymous.
You can get hurt opening yourself up to real people, but you can
say anything to a computer, and it won't judge or criticize you.
That is why sociologists are turning to computers to do their
interviewing (Kiesler and Sproull 1986).  For example, 14% more
students admitted to drug use in a survey by computer than by
pencil-and-paper (Sproull and Kiesler 1991, 45).  In a Scottish
survey of alchohol use, people would report greater use to a
computer than in a face-to-face interview, and the figures given
to the computer matched actual use more closely (Waterton and
Duffy 1984).
 
Now this is odd.  We all know that the computer can store
anything we say.  Yet we nevertheless feel safe in telling it the
most intimate details of our lives.  For example, there is a
computer program for doing sex therapy, Sexpert.  Videotaped
sessions with the computer showed the couples "clearly engaged"
by Sexpert.  They "seriously discussed their sex life,
relationship, and Sexpert's comments with each other" (Binik et
al. 1989).  Why this trust?  Because we are isolated from social
cues and so feel more free from criticism than if speaking to a
person.  Opening up to the wrong human being can be humiliating
or hurtful.  Not so a computer.
 
And of course, there is a lively market for computer pornography.
I came across the following advertisement in _PC-Magazine_:
 
;pxNow You Can Have Your Own GIRLFRIEND
 
. . . a sensuous woman living in your computer!
 
GIRLFRIEND is the first VIRTUAL WOMAN.  You can watch her, talk
to her, ask her questions and relate with her.  Over 100 actual
VGA photographs allow you to see your girlfriend as you ask her
to wear different outfits, and guide her into different sexual
activities.  As a true artificial intelligence program,
GIRLFRIEND starts with a 3000 word vocabulary [beautiful but
dumb? --NNH] and actually GROWS the more you use it.  She will
remember your name, your birthday, and your likes and dislikes.
GIRLFRIEND comes with the base software [sic] and GIRLFRIEND
LISA.  Additional girls will be added.  This program requires 7-
10MB of free space ("Sexy" 1994).;ex
 
This is, of course, the same male fantasy as _The Stepford
Wives_, the woman who is totally satisfying because she is
completely docile because she is a machine.
 
The same fantasy comes in negative forms, however.  Once, when I
spoke this paper, one of my hearers told me the following story.
(I am quoting this man accurately as I can.)
 
;pxI write in bed, using a yellow pad and a pen that will write
upside down, a `space pen.'  Then, the next morning, I transcribe
what I have written onto the computer.  I resolved to get a
laptop computer to eliminate one step of this two-step process.
When I got the laptop, I found I could not take it into bed with
me--it felt like a homosexual encounter.  I still can't do it.  I
can sit on the side of the bed with the laptop, but I can't take
it into bed with me.;ex
 
My informant said that he was telling this to people standing
around after my talk when a woman chimed in: "I had the same
experience.  I bought a laptop to write in bed, but I couldn't
take it to bed.  It's all analytical, logical, dichotomous, and I
won't sleep with a man like that."
 
Odd as it may seem, many, many psychological researchers have
come to the same conclusion: _people almost instinctively think
of computers as other people_ (Forman and Pufall 1988, 247; Frude
1983).  "Extremely short exposures to a relatively simple
computer program . . . induce powerful delusional thinking in
quite normal people," wrote Joseph Weizenbaum, having watched
people anthropomorphize and become deeply involved with his
programs ELIZA and DOCTOR (Weizenbaum 1976, 6-7, 188-191).
 
These fantasies of the machine as person, indeed as sexual
partner, do not attach just to intelligent machines, where they
are somewhat justifiable.   The British researcher I've been
quoting reported an interview with a racing car driver who spoke
of his quasi-human relation with his car.  Two sculptors she
interviewed showed the same kind of personal involvement with
their medium (Shotton 1989, 264).  "People form all sorts of
emotional bonds to machines, for example, to musical instruments,
motorcycles, and cars," notes Weizenbaum (7).  Apparently one can
have a human relation with _any_ medium to which one is
passionately committed or, perhaps I should say, any medium into
which one can passionately involve oneself.  Relevant here would
be Marion Milner's 1957 classic study of artists' emotional
relations to their medium as both an extension of self and a
piece of the world that one works on "out there," a special kind
of transitional object.  The computer just makes this process
faster and more drastic, because it exhibits "intelligent"
behavior like another human.
 
In sum, then, we have some fantasies about the computer as a
thing: phallic fantasies of power and oral fantasies of engulfing
pleasure.  We also have these more remarkable fantasies that the
computer is something more than a thing, something between person
and thing.  We have a quasi-human relationship with the machine
as helpmate, as true friend, as permissive parent, as sex object,
and as sex partner.  And all these fantasies enter into
communication on the Internet.
 
 
 
The machineness of the machine, it seems to me, affects Internet
communication by subtracting and by adding.  The machine takes
away some of our ordinary human-to-human cues, but it adds other
elements from the fantasies we bring to the computer.
 
The most obvious way the machine affects Internet talk is to take
away most of the ongoing signs we have of another person's
feelings in face to face communication.  We lose the feedback,
the chuckle, the smile, the raised eyebrow, the rolled eyes.
Even on the telephone we still have pacing and tone of voice.
But on the Internet, all we have are typed words--"plain text."
Irony is lost and sarcasm literal.  Yet, paradoxically,
conversely, without eye contact or body language, it feels as
though we have a wire going directly into the other person's
brain or our own.  Communication feels "greased" (in John
Seabrook's phrase above)--because you are relating directly to
the "mind" of a computer.
 
Perhaps that's why people think writing on the Internet is aural.
As in the opening phrase of this essay, "Talking on the
Internet."  All through this essay, I've been calling Internet
communication speaking and hearing, and I doubt you even noticed.
But people don't _talk_ on the Internet, they type.  One man left
his Caps Lock key on and typed his message all in capitals.  He
got back a reply, "Why are you shouting at me?" (Filipczak 1994).
On the Internet, we blur sensory modes between seeing and
hearing, reading and listening, writing and talking, and this is
part of a general loss of boundaries.
 
The Internet is, in the word that all writers fall back on,
"vast"--23 million people all chattering away.  We see this sense
of size in imagery like the "information superhighway," that we
are to drive on in our Vice-President's phallic fantasies.  Or
the vast "sea of information" of oral fantasy, inconceivably
bigger than any one human being.  Our power fantasies would have
us penetrating and mastering this huge thing.  But there is also
the fear--and wish--to be swept up in it, to lose oneself in it,
to be engulfed.  This is how a computer columnist phrases his
dislike for a windowed interface:
 
;pxI like the uncluttered and unplanned void before me.  It is
the untamed wilderness.  The prompt is a beacon, my North Star,
my constant reminder that the Internet is a seething, roiling
cyber-ocean, changing every second.  To view it through the
filtering shades of a menu or friendly-izing interface is to
forget its savage reality, to dim its digital vastness (Greenberg
1994).;ex
 
Another boundary we lose on the Internet is status.  A famous
_New Yorker_ cartoon has one dog telling another, in front of a
computer, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."  With
precautions, nobody can tell whether you are male or female,
young or old, nerd or body beautiful, the company president or
the mailroom clerk.  The result in intra-company communication
is, on the one hand, more participation by women and experts
(people who are not normally listened to in meetings) but _less_
consensus.  _Less_ consensus because pressure to conform from
higher in the hierarchy is reduced.  Also people begin to flame.
 
Flaming starts up because there are no rules. "People who are
extremely nice individuals get on a PC and suddenly it's as if
they're screaming," notes the manager of an e-mail system.
"There's no formal etiquette for e-mail" (Cobb 1993).  Internet
society has no way of disapproving breaches of "Netiquette"
except by flaming in return.  You could screen out the offender
by a "bozo filter," but the bozo doesn't know he's being filtered
out--he just doesn't get an answer.
 
That's another difference between Internetting and really
speaking to someone.  You type in your usually longish
communication.  Then you wait for what very often is a shortish
reply.   You don't get answered until the person you're
addressing comes online again.  That could take only a few
seconds or several days.
 
In these negatives, these removals, communicating on the Internet
resembles some much older forms of communication.  I'm thinking
of the confessional, where you speak to an invisible priest,
often at length, often getting only a brief reply at the end of
your long and hopeful statement.  I'm thinking also of the
psychoanalytic couch, where you speak on and on to the analyst,
invisible behind your head and, again, you get (usually) a very
brief reply, sometimes many minutes or even days later.  Both
those modes encourage regression toward dependency and fantasy--
like the Internet.  Both lead you to say things you would not say
face to face--like the Internet.
 
The machine takes away some aspects of human communication, but
it adds others.  Notably, the machine adds that peculiar half-
humanity we relate to. We mirror to the person we are talking to
the ambivalent relationship we have with the computer by which we
are talking.  On the one hand, the computer does useful things
for us.  It balances our checkbook, it organizes our Rolodex, or
it checks our spelling.  On the other hand, the machine
frustrates us by that same mindless and tireless obedience,
because it has no common sense, no intuition.  It can drive us
nuts, and we get mad at it.  In fact, a police officer, having
been presented with `Do not understand' once too often, stepped
back and put two shots into the computer (Simons 1985, 28).  I
suspect that most of us from time to time have wanted to do the
same thing.
 
We mirror those mixed feelings of helpfulness and rage to the
people we talk to on the Internet.  The frustration comes out as
flaming, when some hapless "newbie" asks yet again a FAQ
(frequently asked question).  But we are just as likely to do
useful things for some needy soul at the other end, like
replacing lost books or supplying data for an article.  Flaming
and giving act out to other people the ambivalent emotions we
feel toward the computer.
 
I think the anonymity and this fusion of machine and other person
explain why there is so much sex on the Internet.  Columnist John
Dvorak notes that the most successful online services, in the
U.S. anyway, are those that encourage frank sexual chat.  On one
network, America Online, he writes, "You can do a search on just
about any sexual habit or wacky orientation imaginable, and
you'll find a slew of people--men and women--who list themselves
as aficionados begging to be chatted with or sent mail" (Dvorak
1994).  In other words, the willingness and compliance of the
computer carries over--not unreasonnably--into one's sexual
fantasies about the people one talks to on the Internet.
 
In short, when communicating on the Internet, we set up a
relationship with other people in which the people get less human
and the machine gets more human.  That is how the three signs of
the Internet regression come into play: flaming, flirting, and
giving.  Our feelings toward the computer as computer become our
feelings toward the people to whom we send e-mail or post
messages.  We flame to the person as though he or she were an
insensitive thing, a machine that can't be hurt.  We flirt with
the machine as though it were a person and could interact with
us, compliantly offering sex.  We feel open and giving toward the
computer because the computer is open and giving to us.
 
This confusion of person and machine is what makes the Internet
regression so special.  The regression starts with a variety of
phallic-aggressive fantasies, more men's than women's, but
women's, too.  Then both men and women have the sense of being
lost in a vast, engulfing sea of information, millions of times
bigger than the finite human sitting at a computer screen
embarking on it.  The result is an "oral" loss of boundary
between person and machine.  The person you are talking to on the
Internet is thought of as a machine, and the machine is thought
of as a person.  Then, at an anal level, if you will, who is
living blurs into what is dead.  At an oral level, one merges.
Time on the Internet--"subjective eternity" Seabrook calls it--is
not part of one's real life, but a dependency or addiction to
that great power.
 
The net result is a lack of inhibition.  People express love and
aggression to a degree they never would face to face.  Yet,
throughout the regression, the Internetter functions by means of
the most advanced of ego skills: language, issuing computer
commands, and knowing the mysteries of Unix or Gopher or some
other communications interface.  The result is a regression, yes,
but one that expands the mind from its highest functioning to its
earliest.
 
Let me give you an example of this regression, a young man named
Alex who appears in Sherry Turkle's fine book, _The Second Self_.
Alex is a computer science student at M.I.T. who spends 15 hours
a day on the computer, a true member of what is called hacker
culture.  Listen for the symptoms and levels I've been
describing: phallic strengths, oral merger, narcissistic
mirroring, the blending of person and machine--
 
;pxIf you look at it from the outside, it looks like I spend most
of my time alone.  But that is not really true.  First of all,
there are the other hackers.  We eat together a lot, we talk
about the system.  And then I spend a lot of time, I mean _a lot
of time_, on electronic mail.  Sometimes I think that electronic
mail is more of an addiction for me than the computer is.  I talk
to people all over the country.  When you type mail into the
computer you feel you can say anything.  A lot of it is just
about the system, but sometimes it gets pretty personal.  When
you type into the machine you can go really fast.  The touch is
very sensitive.  I don't even feel that I am typing.  It feels
much more like one of those Vulcan mind melds, you know, that Mr.
Spock does on _Star Trek_.  I am thinking it, and then there it
is on the screen.  I would say that I have a perfect interface
with the machine . . . perfect for me.  I feel totally telepathic
with the computer.  And it sort of generalizes so that I feel
telepathic with the people I am sending mail to.  I am glad I
don't have to see them face to face.  I wouldn't be as personal
about myself.  And the telepathy with the computer--well, I
certainly don't think of it as a person there, but that doesn't
mean that I don't _feel_ it as a person there.  Particularly
since I have personalized my interface with the system to suit
myself.  So it's like being with another person, but not a
strange person.  Someone who knows just how I like things done
(Turkle 1984, 211).;ex
 
That's what makes the Internet regression so distinctive.  The
machine becomes us, and we become the machine.
 
Alex's regression starts with his feelings of reaching "all over
the country," "you can say anything," "you can go really fast."
Alex also feels merged with the machine, "telepathy with the
computer," his "Vulcan mind meld."  Once the boundary between
person and machine is gone, the person he talks to on the
Internet is thought of as a machine, and he thinks of the machine
as a person.  He feels "telepathic" with both person and machine.
Once regressed that way, "Sometimes it gets pretty personal."
 
I like this Internet regression.  I find it a fascinating
marriage of the most sophisticated human technology with our
half-savage, half-animal psyches.  I think it's something new and
amazing and quite wonderful in the spectrum of human relations.
 
Those who don't see it that way, however, can take comfort.  The
Internet regression is also temporary.  Today's Internetting will
change, maybe even by the time you read this.  A huge influx of
unskilled users is coming onto the Internet, people who lack the
cheery openness that a hacker like Alex expresses.  The
technology too will change.  Real Soon Now (as the computer
magazines say), we will be able to replace today's "plain text"
with digitized voices.  Real Soon Now, we will be able to have
pictures of speaker and hearer.  Real Soon Now, computer
technology will restore to the Internet the physical cues of face
to face talk.  Too bad, say I.  The Internet Regression has
been--still is--fun.
 
Notes
 
1.  There is an exception to every rule.  A computer-resistant
friend has since told me that he named his first computer Silvia
(after Shakespeare's "Who is Silvia?  What is she?") and his
second after the woman whose influence pervades his scholarly
work.
 
Works Cited
 
Binik, Y. M., C. F. Westbury, and D. Servan-Schreiber.  "Case
Histories and Shorter Communications."  _Behavioral Research
Therapy_ 27.3 (1989): 303-06.
 
Cobb, Nathan.  "Read My Screen."  _Boston Globe_ 20 Mar. 1993,
Living, p. 21.
 
Dowell, Kristina.  Letter.  _Washington Post Magazine_ 17 Apr.
1994, W3.
 
Dvorak, John C.  "Sex On-line: Shhhhh, It's a Secret."  _PC-
Magazine_ 13.12 (1994): 93.
 
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Norman N. Holland
Department of English
University of Florida
Gainesville FL 32611-2036 U.S.A.