Fear Minus 3 Percent
Equals America.

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company

Money talks. Money talks loud. When it speaks, people hear it above the din and the clamor.

Numbers lie. (The rain falls on the broad magnolia leaves outside the open window behind me.) They don't have to lie, but they can lie and they do lie. (I'm glad it falls. The parched roots and thirsty tubers need tonight's hopeful autumnal rain.) The numbers lie as much as the numbers makers want them to lie.

Employ natural numbers, negative numbers, or zero in an arithmetic formula, such as 1 plus 1 equals 2, and the numbers become integers, which represent a kind of truth.

Some men spend one of their careers, some few others devote most of their lifetime trying to prove that 1 plus 1 equals something other than 2, but I won't believe them. Any way I write it, it comes out the same.

Do you think, perchance, that the Internet is "a dangerous thing"? Do you draw a distinction between "to think" and "to believe"? (Does it bother your sense of order that I placed the question marks outside the closing quotation marks in the previous two sentences?)

'The Internet Is a Dangerous Thing.'

"54% of those not online believe the Internet is a dangerous thing." The numbers speak from strategic locations inside the strings of words. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released the numbers last week under the title, "Who's not online: 57% of those without Internet access say they do not plan to log on."

57% minus 54% equals 3%. I'd very much like to ask the 3% who aren't afraid why they have no fear of the Internet, but I don't know who they are. I'd have to venture into realms of pure speculation. Instead, I'll turn to Pew's "Summary of Findings." These are among them:

Half the adults in America don't surf the Internet. Never. Of that half, 57% don't care if they ever ride a cyber wave. 32% of the half that don't surf are (or, if you cotton to what my software grammar editor suggests, 32% of the "half that don't surf is" or 32% of the "halves that don't surf are") adamant in their avoidance, claiming they will never, ever, ever get Internet access. Follow me? "That comes to about 31 million Americans," the Pew findings found.

Why are the 31 million reluctant? Pew supposes they are victims of the "gray gap," which stands like a pixilated gulf between "aging Baby Boomers and senior citizens" on the one side, and "the young" on the other. The young, the report finds, are eager to gain access, but too often can't afford it. (They're working toward it, I presume. They'd fare better by asking mama.)

They're Fretful about the 'Online World.'

Here's how Pew states it (and you'll notice, I suppose, how much better their handle is on it than my handle is on it ((and, as confusing as I'm becoming, I'd just as soon listen more intently to the falling rain)) ): "Most of the strongest Internet holdouts are older Americans, who are fretful about the online world and often don't believe it can bring them any benefits. In contrast, a substantial majority those under 30 who are not currently online say they plan to get access, though the expense of going online still looms as a major issue to them. This suggests that over an extended period of time, perhaps in a generation, Internet penetration will reach the levels enjoyed by the telephone, which is used by 94% of Americans, and the television, which is used by 98% of Americans. Among those most likely to say they plan to get Internet access are parents with children living at home."

In one part of the findings, Pew defined adults as any one they polled who claimed to be over the age of 18. In another part, the one just mentioned in the paragraph above, to be young is to be under 30. At Cricket Song, under 30 is most certainly young - and to be eighteen is to be gone away to University.

Old in the Pew findings is over the age of 65. Old, but not so old, is over the age of 50. That makes me old, but not so old - and just barely so old at that. Like Sally O'Malley, I'm fifty and love to kick, to kick against the pricks. (For those heathens and unlearned baby Christians among ye, kick against the pricks is a Holy Bible phrase, Acts 26:14. As for Sally O'Malley, I saw her first on Saturday Night Live, a television program, but recently she moved to Cricket Song. You ought to see her kick.)

Challenge a polltaker about methodology and you'll be buried in the avalanche of logarithms and statistical certitudes they can unloose in an instant to smother my stupidity. Their numbers come with built-in wiggle room, a mere plus or minus three points this way, four or so points that way.

I Can't Stop Listening to the Rain.

One thousand, one hundred, and fifty-eight (1,158) persons can speak for America's entire multitude of not-onlines. (It is incredible, the beauty which is embedded like sweet echoes into the sound of rain falling at drought's end. It falls with surges of thunder to the leading edge of dawn.)

Here's a Pew pollster's rationalization: "For results based on an April survey which focused on non-Internet users, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting telephone surveys may introduce some error or bias into the findings of opinion polls."

Debunking methodology is an old hat. It's more fun to wear a baseball cap backwards and debate, belittle, or embrace the findings.

It was the hook of fear that caught my mind's eye. Pew made much ado about the fear, but wouldn't define it. Instead, it hovered in the foggy million shades of gray like three-headed Cerberus, the encryption hound prowling the gates of some private hell.

Do they fear the FBI's snoopy Carnivore E-mail sniffing system; or some mean spirited, hard-drive eating virus; or the insidious band of data thieves, hungry for private facts; or the mad bakers of poisoned cookies, who will swipe PIN numbers and passwords to employ in nefarious deeds, the transfer of bank balances to untraceable offshore accounts? Are they afraid that some cyber criminal might discover their SSAN and literally steal their identity? And sex! Raw, perverse, unrestricted sex! The dangerous implications are legion.

Here's how Pew asked it, Question No. 35:

"Q35 Finally, here are some things people sometimes say about the Internet. Just based on what you have heard or read, please tell me whether you agree or disagree with each one. Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree? (DON'T KNOW/REFUSED)

1. I'm missing out on things by not using the Internet and email.
2. The Internet is mostly a form of entertainment.
3. The Internet would help me find out about things more easily.
4. The Internet is a dangerous thing.
5. The Internet is confusing and hard to use.
6. Internet access is too expensive."

Can you admire the directness, the simplicity, the cut-straight-to-the-chase structure of the questions? (Sally O'Malley's answers: "Refused. Refused. Refused. Refused. Refused. Strongly agree.")

The Lurkers Have Lures, Set Ambushes.

"Non-users have a variety of concerns about the Internet that extend beyond the expense of purchasing a computer and paying for online service," the findings state. "Those concerns center on the online environment. Generally, non-users believe the online world is not very useful or hospitable. They are also concerned about the dangers that lurk on the Web, and about their ability to maintain their privacy online."

Those who lurk are those who set the ambush. They are the casters of the lure. The Internet, then, is the lure and the ambush. If I were old and had a telephone, a television, and a refrigerator, I wouldn't go there, way out there into the online unknown, either or neither. (You pick.)

My would-be reason, however, were I old, very old, would not be so mighty as fear. It's just so easy to sell fear in America. Pew's research writers couldn't resist the lure. They know through careful practice how effectively fear can motivate the millions of skim thinkers, who hunker down behind the brick walls of their suburban enclaves, from whence they can pop their heads up and choose a cause to support.

Rather, I think I'd stay offline for the same reason a bright minded, cheerful seventy-nine year old woman I know chooses to stay offline. She's not afraid of much more than loneliness, night driving, and the occasional tornado. She won't go onto the Internet because she doesn't want to be bothered by another learning curve, the same reason she hasn't bothered to master the videocassette recorder and the programmable telephone. She could. She won't. "It's just another damned fancy appliance," she said. "At my age, who needs it?"

EDITOR'S NOTE: Click this sentence to open a link to the report, "Who's Not Online: 57% of those without Internet access say they do not plan to log on."

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