Dialogue: I'm happier ogling my money than going to the dogs

By JOE BENNETT

Am I missing something? Is there something I don't get? A woman has just rung. She sounded amiable, quick and sane. She said we had met last weekend in Flagrante Bibendo, that fine pub on Queen St. I dredged my memory but came up with nothing.

She had fallen into one of the holes. I apologised. "No matter," she said. She was ringing to find out, for the purposes of a mag she works for, the names of my five favourite internet sites.

"Well," I said, "my number one site, without doubt, is the juiciest porn you could wish for."

She breathed in.

"The ANZ Bank site," I said. "I visit to ogle my money. When a pay cheque lands, I can admire its fat bounty at any hour of night or day. And that," I said, "is sexy."

"I see," she said, "and number 2?"

I thought a bit. "Have I mentioned the ANZ site?"

She assumed I was teasing but I told her that I rarely use the internet.

"You've got dogs, haven't you?" she said. Clearly in the good old Flagrante the drink had unshackled my tongue. "What about dog sites?"

"Dog sites?"

"Dog sites."

"The only dog sites I know," I said, "are the beach and the hills and in front of the fire. And also," I added in afterthought, "the crotches of well-dressed dinner guests and anywhere that smells of decomposition - though that distinction may be redundant."

"But cyberspace seethes with dog sites," she said, "more sites than you can throw a stick for."

I asked their purpose. She said they were for people who loved dogs, who wanted to know more about dogs. "And that," she said, "means you."

"Indeed," I said, "I love my dogs and if I want to know more about them, I look at them and play with them and take them to where they can run."

"But don't you want to talk to other dog owners?"

"Not much," I said, "and if I do, I have only to go to the beach, where the windswept women in scarves are always happy to stand about the sand and talk dogs."

"Try this," she said, and we parted affably. "This" was www.i-love-dogs.com.

I typed it into my computer (wrinkling my archaic nose at the lower case i, those illiterate hyphens) and waited. The internet, I find, requires much waiting. In the time I waited at www.i-love-dogs.com, time spent watching gigabytes unload from nowhere, I could have skimmed through my questioner's entire magazine and realised how little of it I wanted to read.

I pressed the button marked "dog laughs." Two cartoons took a minute to appear on my screen and a second to reveal themselves as majestically unfunny.

I went to "free dog stuff," which offered me screen-savers with dogs on them, dog e-mail and access to materials to build my own dog website. I learned how to contact other dog-lovers and I was led to believe that somewhere in cyberland there would be a club for owners of three-legged offspring of a fat lab and a sleek alsatian.

But I chose not to join it. I looked up "dog health." Another minute and I learned that the potential age of a dog had been computed at 27 years and yet few dogs lived more than 13. To find out why I had to press another button. I didn't press it.

The internet has abundant uses. E-mail serves me and a million others beautifully. Businesses, I have no doubt, find great virtues in the web's convenience. But most of the rest is dandruff. It is drool. It is self-promoting nonsense. It is unedited tripe.

And the claims that are made for it are monstrous.

Phrases such as "the information revolution" and "the knowledge economy" drip from the political tongue more readily than any explanation of what they mean.

And the notion that the internet will revolutionise education deserves only contempt. Those who assert that if New Zealand is to compete with the rest of the world, a laptop must sit on every school desk, know nothing of teaching.

One might as well say, as smarm-laden door-to-door parasites have said for years, that an encyclopaedia in the home will make your children bright.

But I do not need to say all this. Time will do it for me.

Time will winnow the truth from the blather, and the internet will settle down to become what it was always destined to be - a convenient device and a club for the lonely.

And now I shall e-mail these words and drive to the beach where the dogs can rejoice, where the land meets the sea and the sea meets the sky and all are winter honest.