SPECIAL PRODUCTS DFW AutoLink NEW! DFW AutoFinder Deal on Wheels Star-Telegram Weddings Bridal Magazine Neighborhood Values DFW Find a Home Special Sections Back to Home > News > Tuesday, Aug 08, 2006 Local news Posted on Mon, Aug. 07, 2006 email this print this Read more Dr. Bombay columns I don't have to tell you that there's something seriously wrong at almost every level of government. Anyone who sits through a 30-minute TV newscast waiting for the 30 seconds of actual news already knows that. And even if you're only dimly aware of the daily parade of nuttiness around you, you certainly can't deny that the Four Horsemen appear to already have their Justins in the stirrups. There's more than enough war (Operation Enduring Screwup comes to mind) famine (pick a spot, any spot in Africa) pestilence (take your pick from AIDS, cancer, bird flu, hemorrhagic fevers of every stripe, irritable bowel syndrome and toenail fungus) and death (for some reason, Operation Enduring Screwup come to mind again) going around to scare the bejeebers out of anyone with a fraction of a brain.

There's global warming we apparently don't know how to fix, inflation spiraling out of control because nobody has the vaguest notion of a plan to deal with it, gasoline prices that make Chanel No. 5 look like a bargain, an educational system that can do little more than turn out empty-headed slackers, corrupt multinational corporations more powerful than most of the nations of the earth exploiting everything in their patchs, a war on drugs that's going as well as that little unpleasantness in Iraq, and I'll bet you can't remember the last time you had any decent foie gras.

But the surest sign of the approaching Apocalypse came in June, when a clearly out-of-control U.S. Patent Office allowed “social networking” — most often defined as a bunch of lazy, horny teen-agers looking for an easy way to score — to be patented. I'll say it again. Social. Networking. Patented.

Social networks have been around since humans were a gaggle of hairy, low-browed savages, defacing the walls of their homes, speaking in guttural, monosyllabic grunts and squatting in the bushes to make a No. 2. And while I might appear to be talking about almost any NASCAR gathering, I am in fact talking about the dawn of civilization.

Tobor discovered one day that fellow hunter Rogrok was as fond of pummeling unsuspecting mastodons with a large chunk of igneous rock as he. As it turned out, Rogrok also shared this fondness with Mmekhor, a cave-dweller from the other side of the plain, and they both had a long-time interest in clubbing women over the head and dragging them back to the cave to play house. Rogrok mentioned this casually one day while looking for just the right igneous rock with Tobor. To make a ponderous analogy short, Tobor was introduced to Mmekhor, and the two became fast friends, pummeling mastodons and clubbing women with Rogrok until the wee hours. And though the story is somewhat spoiled by the fact that, one day while hunting, Tobor accidentally hit Mmekhor in the face with an igneous rock — although he denied drinking any berry juice later — it serves as a model for all social networks to come.

Today we have no mastodons to help us find new friends, and clubbing a woman will only lead to incarceration — or castration if my wife has any say in the matter. So, to add the personal touch to our lives, we fall back on the cold, impersonal world of computers and the Internet.

Remember when computer dating was all the rage? Suddenly people too socially retarded to actually meet and learn about somebody else in the quest for friendship could fill in a questionnaire, and then an expensive box that sounded not unlike a threshing machine running over a cardboard box full of puppies would sort through some punch cards and spit out the ones representing the closest matches based on how other people answered the same questions. Very scientific. I bet the matchmaker even wore a lab coat.

Of course, there was no way to ensure that the people who matched had been in any way truthful when they answered the questions. How many of us would actually describe ourselves as morbidly obese or describe our real idea of what should happen on a first date or mention that droopy eye or horrible skin condition?

As computers became accessible to the masses, we found we no longer had to depend on third parties to lie to other people about ourselves. We could instantly become who we dreamed of being, and there was no way anyone would ever find out the truth, that we were a bunch of pathetically lonely, uninteresting misfits who rarely emerged from our parents' basements. Suddenly we could become Chad Bigmember or Queen Sluttessa, with enough charm, wealth and sexual prowess to dazzle anyone else in the chat room.

Virtual tribes of liars soon evolved, each member's nickname more absurd than the next, each member creating a character for himself or herself and living an imaginary life that existed only in the ether. The tribes would meet regularly and at odd hours — usually after Mom and Dad had passed out from tequila shooters — to trade stories and insults, to barter pirated software and X-rated site passwords and to rag on rival tribes of losers. Chatters might even pair off, retreating to private areas to type dirty and let sexual fantasies run amok regardless of the very real possibility that both parties were in actuality 40-year-old grossly overweight mailmen with poor hygiene. At least they had a lot in common.

But chat-room personalities were fleeting in nature, the half-truths and fantasies known only to other pitiable souls who recognized someone's Internet handle. Newcomers to the room would have to learn the entire construct of lies from scratch. And then, one regrettable day in 1995, some enterprising snake-oil salesman came up with the idea for the modern Internet social network. One of the first to launch was Classmates.com, where you could seek out the other nerds from your high school class. SixDegrees.com appeared a few years later as a place where you could list your friends and family members so you could see if you had any sort of connection with any other user on the site.

Friendster showed up in 2002 and introduced many to the “small-world” concept, the idea that anybody else in the world can be reached through a relatively short chain of acquaintances. This proved to be immensely popular with the basement-dwelling crowd. It was the people behind Friendster who applied for and received that copyright. And while I can't fault anyone for trying to protect a way to make a buck from the Internet, granting a patent for a method of meeting people is roughly equivalent to granting one for breathing;.

But it didn't stop there. By 2005, MySpace.com — the current favorite — was getting more hits than Google. That should give you some small idea of how many losers there are in the world.

Get up. Step away from the stupid computer. Don't hide behind a keyboard. Get some sun. Stop by the bar for a drink or 12. And, if someone's not going to like you, at least let it be based on reality, Mr. Bigmember.

Social networking by the glow of a computer monitor has somehow made introversion and reclusiveness acceptable behavior. It's not. It's aberrant. You truly never know who your friends really are.

Dear Dr. Bombay: Terrible column. Your not getting enough computer questions from people too gullible to realize they can get advice without the attitude from other sources? You really need to fill up your precious space with garbage editorializing on the government's ability to protect the Internet?

OK, write about it, that's your prerogative, but give me some detail. What are their specific duties with regard to “protecting the Internet?” Are they supposed to be putting steel pipe around fiber? Are they supposed to be implementing a full-country firewall like they have in China and the UAE?

What do you want them to do, and how are they deficient with regard to Internet security? Pointing out past problems in other areas is not the same as making a case for a lack of Internet security. You didn't even say why they were given a failing grade or what criteria they were graded on.

Maybe if you'd left some of the other ranting out you would have had room to squeeze in some useful information for us. All I saw today was fear mongering.

You damn well better show a little fear when the agency tasked with protecting the United States from cyberattacks can't even secure its own computers.

And I'm so sorry I didn't provide you with all the niggling little details. I assumed — apparently incorrectly — that anyone smart enough to read this column has at least glanced at a newspaper in the past year or heard the TV news in the background while off in the kitchen getting a Fresca and some Orville Redenbacher .

Lastly, it appears that you're confusing this column with the other weekly sausage I grind out. Here's a clue (you might want to jot this down): If I'm answering questions about computers, it's the computer Q&A column. If not, it's the one where I try to pry open your eyelids and make you look at bad stuff.

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