Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

Is the Internet becoming Citizen's Band-ized?

In 1961 when I got my first CB radio there were only eight people on the air in my county. We all signed on carefully using our call signs, limited our conversation to important things, and on channel 9 (the public channel then) we could talk 30 miles. You know the end of this story. Citizen's band was democratized -- everybody got one, licenses were not required, and the airwaves got so jammed that a CBer is happy to 'get out' 10 miles. And the bottom-feeding level of CB conversation makes Oprah look high class. Is this the ghost of Christmas future for the Internet? Is the Internet becoming Citizen Band-ized?

Not many years ago most of us greeted our dozen or so e-mail messages with delight -- Gee! somebody likes me! There was an electronic intimacy we appreciated, and still do. But as the Internet has grown in stupendous proportions, (and there is no end in sight), the resulting E-mail blizzard is causing an increasing number of on-line folk to get snowed in. Some are even unplugging altogether, a sad choice.

And that is just the regular mail... what about the junk-Email? With a simple click of the mouse any individual can send the latest clever version of "the Night before Christmas" to all hundred people on their list. They seldom realize that most of those recipients will think it clever to also click it on to a couple hundred themselves. The result is a blizzard of Spam E-mail. It is getting harder to sort the important from the chaff. And the commercial Junk E-mail is now reaching massive proportions. (And they're just getting started.) So far, the courts have sided with the junk E-Mailers, even if you have to pay to download their advertisements.

Of course there's the new e-mail filter software (like Eudora-Pro) which enables the recipient to automatically forward, file, respond -- even delete -- messages based on the sender's name or any word in the content. (Don't send me a message with the word "Sale" or "Price" in it. -- the trouble here is that, perhaps you want to talk about the 'high price' of our calling, and you get deleted as a SalesSpam!) Then, of course, there are an increasing number of us who have added one or more unlisted addresses or private lines to bring some sanity and priority to the incoming flood. I have some friends with five or six addresses -- effectively pre-sorting their mail by which address they give to whom.

But it will only get worse. The "noise" is increasingly, not diminishing. There are more swine than pearls. The new filtering systems lag behind the cleverness of the spam-ers. An increasing number of thinkers are worried that the Internet is being Citizen Band-ized? When we all talk at once, our need-to-talk may get met, but nobody listens.

But a deeper question for us is about the church. Perhaps the church too is being Citizen band-ized. In the last few decades we have jammed the airwaves with our preaching and programs. We've piled counters high with contemporary Christian music. We've absolutely crammed bookstore shelves with helpful books and inspirational cassettes. There are two or three challenging seminars and conferences to attend every single week of the year. But most of it is noise. Today's Christians may be hearing so much that they no longer hear anything. Or, at least the important things. We are being Citizen's Band-ized.

Of course, I contribute to this problem. I'm the Internet's Chiefest of noisemakers. And, I'll be honest with you -- I sometimes don't even read my own Column when it comes! There's too much stuff.

So, I've made a decision. I'm going to quit contributing to the weekly e-mail blizzard. Sure, I'll still write the Tuesday column and post it on the Web every week -- I can't stop writing. But I'm quitting home delivery service. If you like the column, you can see it every week by going and getting it on purpose... at http://www.goshen.net/tuesday/

I know this is troublesome for those on an E-Mail-only service like Juno. But the Internet noise level has got to come down somehow... so, I'll do my part. If you really want the column, it's there for you on the Web every week.

Of course the next-generation browsers will have a fully developed 'Fetch' capability. Your new browser will go get selected web pages every night while you're sleeping. The column will be there every morning, fresh and updated. But, for now, the 3500 ministers on this e-mail list just got rubbed off. No eternal security here. To get the column you'll have to make regular re-commitments by fetching it off the web... at http://indwes.edu/tuesday/

Maybe we'll all listen better if we hear less.

So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu