ROVIN’
AND RAVIN’ WITH MIKE
Copyright
© 1999 by Michael Segers, all rights
reserved
This
Easter, my family and I gathered around the dining table my father made some
years ago to enjoy one of our raucous Scrabble® games, just about as cozy a
situation as I could imagine. I feel almost as snug when I log onto the web-site
of the first and still only freenet in the state of Georgia, and you know where
that is: http://www.peanut.org.
To be honest,
there are a lot of things Sylvester does not have—air pollution and traffic
jams for starters. But that it does have a great resource like Peanut.org is an
indicator of some other resources that it also has: great leadership, concerned
individuals and businesses, a commitment to education, and a strong sense of
community.
So,
before you are tempted to use one of those glittery AOL compact disks for
anything other than a coaster or a frisbee, let me guide you through some of the
pleasures of Peanut.org: People Electronically Acting Neighborly Using
Technology. Notice that the word "people" comes first, while
"technology" comes last. Peanut.org is a neighborhood in cyberspace
where some of the nicest people hang out. Oh, yes, you might bump into me there,
also, but you take your chances….
The
very word freenet (or free-net or free net) as well as the concept that it
stands for is pretty warm and friendly. Look over in the left hand margin, and
click on "Freenet" or "Futurism" and then "Freenet"
to get some background. Then, click on "News" and then "Freenet"
to choose freenets from around the world. Don’t worry. As with aviation, the
Internet claims English as its language of default.
But, what does that all stuff about freenets mean for us,
friends of Peanut.org? Best of all, it means that any money that comes
Peanut.org’s way stays here for people in Worth County. You know if you spend
your dollars at TalCart, or whatever that big store is, your dollars take a one
way trip out of Worth County. If you spend your money at local stores (even
local branches of retail chains), your money is going to pay salaries and taxes
here in Worth County.
The
same is true for Internet providers. If you go with one of the flashy national
chains, you get Internet access, but your community doesn’t get anything.
Let’s say you decide to contribute some money and take advantage of
Peanut.org’s services. Then, that money stays here and helps our community in
many ways.
The
bottom line, though, is you get a lot of bang for your bucks (and a few clichés,
too). Peanut.org provides full Internet access. For most of us, that means
e-mail, and Peanut.org gives us great e-mail service, including automatic
forwarding of e-mail to another address.
You
also have space and template to create your own web page. Do check out the
impressive work of several of our Peanut.org neighbors on their own pages. (Why
don’t you join them?) You can also create a discussion list of your own, or
your company can create a customer list that users can subscribe to, and—this
is important—unsubscribe to. You and up to sixty of your closest friends can
create a discussion forum, united by e-mail, to share and work on documents and
discussions.
A
feature that sounds technical and far out but is really useful is that you have
one meg of hard drive space for storing and accessing documents with your own
private directory. For some time, my old computer’s floppy disk drives did not
work, and I had accumulated many files on its hard drive. When I finally bought
a new computer, I transferred (uploaded) those files from my old computer to my
storage space and then downloaded them into my new computer. Besides, Peanut.org
gives you access to the Internet in all its many protocols—telnet, FTP, and
HTTP. Alphabet soup, anyone?
So,
there are plenty of benefits for you as a friend, user, and supporter of
Peanut.org. But, there are even more benefits for our community. Peanut.org is
an Internet provider for the school system and provides a list for the Georgia
Counselors Network. Sylvester is not just the town with the great Christmas
decorations and the locomotive on the side of the road anymore. What’s on the
side of the road isn’t as memorable as the road, the Information Super
Highway, that our friends and neighbors have laid across the peanut fields and
cypress ponds of our home county. We are the town, the county, the one and only
community, with a freenet, and there is still no other town, county, or
community in Georgia that can claim that.
Perhaps
I need to explain how I can speak of being in Sylvester when I no longer live
there, uh, here. You can take the boy out of Sylvester, but you can’t take
Sylvester out of the boy. But, more than that, in cyberspace, we are all in the
same space. In some ways, I feel more connected to Worth County than I did when
I resided here, uh, there. I can still live there… and here, or is that vice
versa?
If
I summarize my life on the Internet for the past twenty-four hours, that
foolishness will make more sense. Last night, I got a call about the death of an
old friend. I used various search services to locate some friends I had lost
touch with but with whom I wanted to share the sad news. I began to get in touch
with them and also to outline an article on death which I am sparing you for
now.
This
morning, by lunch, I had swapped e-mail, including photos, with a company in
Sweden that we are doing business with. When I got home, I used an Australian
search engine to locate a newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee to read my
friend’s obituary. When I checked my e-mail, I had some responses from old
friends, a note from my goddaughter in Finland, and a notice that I was the high
bidder in an online auction for a videotape of The Spoilers, the 1942
film featuring my beloved John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. Before I go to bed,
if the cats don’t jump onto the keyboard and wipe out the document (it has
happened), this column will be forwarded to Peanut for your reading pleasure.
Speaking
of which, at Peanut.org, you have a lot of links and information to explore,
including some reviews, some rovin’, some ravin’ to keep your computer fired
up. If you haven’t done so, take time to rove up and down the left margin and
check out all the pleasures of Peanut.org, which you’ll surely join me in
ravin’ about. And as you do, keep your feet dry—easy in weather like
this—and your heart full of noble thoughts. I’m patching one more crack in
this weathered old heart of mine with hopes and prayers for some great net, some
inexplicable link, so my old pal Margaret will know that I cherish among my
noble thoughts a sad thought for her loss, a glad thought that I knew her.
Rovin' on the Internet: Online Adventures