By Eolake Stobblehouse

The iBook; is it a toy?? Is it an educational machine? Is it a serious portable?

The iMac; is it for kids? Is it for adults? Is it an networking machine? What is it??

The Internet, is it a research tool? Is it an entertainment medium? Is it the modern babysitter? Is it a threat to authority?

The answers to all of the above is of course... All of the above.

Limits. We all love them. Without limits, we don’t know where we are, do we? Without limits we are overwhelmed by freedom. Freedom is the greatest danger we have, and the most frightening thing in existence. Because with freedom comes responsibility. If we are slaves, we have no responsibility, and we are safe, for the slave owner will take care of his property.

If we are free, we are responsible for our own actions and our own choices.

Just for instance, if we decide that the iMac is a games machine, that means that sitting by it we don’t have to do anything serious. Because it is just for games. But if we accept that it is at the same time a typewriter a thousand times more powerful than any in history, then if we chose not to write that novel we always dreamed of writing, it becomes our own choice. We have no one else to blame. That is frightening.

If we decide that the Internet is simply a hotbed of porn for dirty old men who are nothing at all like ourselves, then we don’t have to face the possibility that it may also be a tool for our kids to become the most illuminated generation in the history of mankind, making us ashamed of talking to them because we will seem ignorant.

We are always so fond of blaming authorities of the limits they impose upon us. And to be sure, authorities love to do so. But I ask you, who chose the authorities, in the end? If an people has had oppressive regimes for millennia, and got rid of them suddenly, do you really believe that they would not have a new one in a flash?

Perhaps we should look between the bars once in a while. Perhaps the spaces beyond are only frightening because we have focused too long on the bars and become myopic. Perhaps it is only our own little arthritic hands that have kept the bars in place for this long.

Just perhaps.

- Stobblehouse