Is the Internet the greatest thing since sliced bread?

By Christine Howard Watson

The Internet is a lot like a bread machine. Savvy marketing strategies persuaded thousands of us to buy these chunky imitation R2D2s and put them in our kitchens next to the microwave ovens that researchers say we aren't using very much anymore. Yes, the bread machine can bake bread with fairly acceptable taste and aroma. But I can and do bake bread. And so do most bakeries. In fact, you can get a decent loaf of bread in almost every grocery store and gas station in North America.

And I can access information with or without my modem.

The techies reading this are rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. To them, I say, I am well aware of the magic of the Internet. I recently downloaded and installed software on our computer at no cost other than connection time. I negotiated a rock-bottom price for a new car using Internet information. I have an e-mail correspondent in Italy. But I have also gotten fast, excellent results using an 800-number, a fax machine, and a real person at ERIC, outperforming several computer searches of that extraordinary database.

As a teacher, I am of course familiar with technology. My first experience with computers was a TRS-80 on a table in a hallway near my classroom. I taught my students and myself simple programming with poorly written manuals and textbooks. We used the computer to practice math and to design shapes that would soon become as primitive in appearance as cave drawings. Our school bought early Apples, then replaced with them shiny new Apples. I was the only elementary school teacher in a graduate level mathematics class who had a curious combination of experience in computing, calculus, and Donkey Kong.

I purchased my first PC at great expense in 1986. It was an IBM in the days when compatibles were called clones. I also selected an eerie green monochrome monitor, a pin-dot printer, and an infant edition of WordPerfect, straight off the shelf. I used my computer in my work as a freelance editor, proofreader, and desk-top publisher and worked while watching David Letterman.

Now I have a new Macintosh and an Apple II in my classroom and banks of computers in three labs. My students can find information about science, geography, and current events with or without the Internet. They can draw, write, and publish--just as my students 21 years ago did with books, maps, newspapers, and felt-tip markers. I have a fast, fancy Zeos with all the bells and whistles on my desk at home. I can access the Internet any time the servers and I aren't busy.

But does the Internet entertain and inform in ways I can't get anywhere else? I'm not so sure it does. Home pages seem to cross the line between entertainment and advertising--I don't enjoy watching commercials on television, so why would I want to see commercials on the computer screen? The structures my son builds with plastic blocks are cooler than those I've found online. I've checked the availability of airline reservations using my Internet connection, but it's simpler to call my florist to bill flowers to my account than to do it online. Is it really more efficient to look up television schedules on the Internet than to pick up a newspaper? Although it is handy to read excerpts from current articles on screen, I still prefer to leaf through magazines one page at a time.

For me, less is more. I have a can opener in my silverware drawer that replaced and outlasted the avocado-colored electric one that gathered dust on my kitchen counter when I was in college--like my bread machine is gathering dust now.

I don't fit the profile of Internet users, but not just because I'm female and 45 years old. The Internet might well be a major growth industry in the 1990s and the subject of countless other magazine articles. But it is unlikely that my fortune will be made there. I'll continue working with and learning about computers and the Internet at school and at home, but not because it is trendier to do so now than it was 20 years ago.

The destiny of the computer is to be a tool. Time will tell if the Internet can or will replace other tools. Internet access might well be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I won't be throwing away the bread knife in my kitchen drawer just yet.

-- Christine Howard Watson teaches second grade at the Community School of Naples in Naples, Fla.