Virtual Realities

Our young friends, Robert and Jenny, had an 8-pound, 1-ounce baby boy who measured 20 inches long when he was born at 4:19 p.m., on August 27. His name is Helio. He has big blue eyes, wispy blond hair, and his grandparents are thrilled with their first grandchild: "What a sweetheart! He is just precious. We love him already!" they say.

How do we know all of this? We visited the World Wide Web.

I have not yet seen this baby, nor talked to his grandparents, yet I have read their "welcome to the world, Helio!" greetings to Robert and Jenny, as well as messages from 19 other well-wishers around the globe.
The day after he was born, Helio's Net-savvy parents sent an electronic message to four dozen friends to go to the Web, type in http://www.growingfamily.com, click on web nursery, search by entering the name of the hospital, tell the computer to look for Helio's birthday, and "welcome our son."

I did. It took me less than a minute for my computer screen to display a full-color picture of Jenny's and Robert's day-old miracle. Then I read the others' greetings, added my own, and sent the entire file on a printer so it can be included in Helio's scrapbook.

Without really being aware it was happening, electronic communication has become completely integrated into my daily life. I create on a computer and deliver the results via electronic attachment. I stay in touch with colleagues and readers through e-mail. I scan a dozen newspapers in a dozen states and peruse magazines before they're even on the newsstands, thanks to the Web. I order clothes, send flowers, extend sympathy via e-companies whose track records in the brick-and-mortar world have lured me to their e-commerce sites. I download airline tickets, cruise the Web for cruises, buy books and CDs, and settle bills online. I have researched my genealogy through numerous portals and expect to soon vote and pay all my taxes on the Internet. I even read an online newspaper, E-Commerce Times (http://www.ecommercetimes.com), to find out about online use.

I am a statistic in a constantly measured demographic. Recently, experts announced "explosive growth" in Internet usage among teen-age girls and women age 55 and above. Their best guestimate is that 50.4 percent of Web users are women, 49.6 percent are men.

Other studies predict that within two years, more than 100 million new users will venture into cyberspace, raising the total number of Americans who log on to read, write, buy, sell and surf to about 210 million. Within my lifetime, I expect Internet usage to be as pervasive as talking on the telephone.

Once, I wrote monthly, in cursive and on heavy paper, to my seldom-seen friend in France. Now we "chat" at least once a week. Because of the 12-hour time difference, she sips her morning espresso, in her bathrobe, as she types to me and I drink decaffeinated coffee, in my bathrobe, as I write back just before I go to sleep. Our instant messenger delivers trivial, daily information that has brought us closer because of its immediacy.
I enjoy the similar "conversations" with a friend who lives on the banks of a distant river in the wilds of Montana. After vowing never to use one of those "newfangled things," he now sends frequent e-mailed fishing reports via the computer his daughter gave him for his 87th birthday. Instead of arriving a week after he mailed them at the post office, his astute observations about his life in the country now take only seconds to arrive in my e-mail queue.

Who knows what Baby Helio's electronic world will be like? Will he see all of his correspondents in real time, on a TV screen? Will he send an e-mail to Mars and get a reply? Will he earn his college degree entirely over the Internet? My imagination isn't vivid enough to conjure up all of his possibilities -- but I bet he'll be able to teach me how to program my VCR!


© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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