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<p><b>New page</b></p><div><pre><br />
SPLIT PERSONALITIES ON ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARDS<br />
by Rangott Spliekin, Soviet News Agency TASS<br />
<br />
During my brief visit to the United States in the fall of 1987, I was a<br />
ble to study certain specialized cases of split personalities. While<br />
they are considered harmless and perhaps tolerably eccentric by the<br />
American psychiatric establishment, it is acknowledged that it is a<br />
growing problem among young technicians.<br />
<br />
Frustrated by a lack of popular recognition which continues to be focus<br />
ed on earners of large income (The "bottom line" as it is popularly<br />
called), these young geniuses are beginning to talk to themselves. But<br />
unlike the ramblers and murmurers we find here in Moscow, they use the<br />
technology available to individuals in America: the home computer.<br />
<br />
A network of electronic bulletin boards exists in the U.S., connected b<br />
y commercial telephone lines and available to almost anyone who has a<br />
computer and a telephone connection device known as a "modem."<br />
Individual subscribers can then sign in and talk to other, similarly<br />
uninspired individuals. The system was developed for the quick transfer<br />
of information but has degenerated into a remote, arms-length<br />
communications system.<br />
<br />
In fact, anyone who can afford to have their home computers occupied<br />
most of the time can establish such a board with "free" software provided<br />
by generous programmers. When I suggested to an official of a<br />
conglomerate telephone company that it was they who created the software<br />
to keep technicians occupied instead of productive and to increase the<br />
profits of the telephone company, the charge was denied.<br />
<br />
But I digress.<br />
<br />
I interviewed Dr. George Sands of the Institute for Abnormal Electronic<br />
Behavior in Berkeley and he acknowledged that there is a growing problem<br />
am ong young technicians (which he insisted on calling "users") as the<br />
amount of bulletin boards continue to grow.<br />
<br />
"There are actually more bulletin boards than users in the Bay Area [Sa<br />
n Francisco and environs] and they kept talking and arguing with the same<br />
people. Some were clearly showing symptoms of boredom. A few clever<br />
ones signed on these boards under several names, taking on a new persona<br />
for each name. They would call under one name and answer under another<br />
name.<br />
<br />
"In one case, a man in his mid-fifties had as many as six personas and<br />
possibly as many as eight. One of the personas was actually promoted to<br />
assistant system operator."<br />
<br />
"How could that be?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"The operator had never actually met this man. Nor heard his voice. I<br />
n fact," he chuckled, "one of those personas was a woman. Now that<br />
couldn't happen if he had ever spoken to him on a voice line."<br />
<br />
Dr. Sands dismissed my contention that the bulletin board system was<br />
dehumanizing, explaining that that was what was said about telephones when<br />
they were first developed. "Americans have too little history to take it<br />
seriously. They much prefer playing with their tools which they often<br />
mistake for toys. Ships were redesigned, in the Nineteenth Century, for<br />
quick, commercial, and sometimes revenue-evading, trips to all parts of<br />
the world. Soon afterwards, Americans were racing them for sport. The<br />
home computer is just another misused tool."<br />
<br />
The real danger, he went on to say, is that more individuals will becom<br />
e isolated from their fellow men. "Home computers are much more<br />
entertaining than even T.V. and television has created a whole generation<br />
of stay-at-homers, referred sarcastically by some commentators as 'couch<br />
potatoes.'" If anything has staved off this horrible eventuality, he<br />
went on to say, it is the fact that more training is required to operate<br />
a home computer than a television set.<br />
<br />
At the moment, only "the best and the brightest and the most<br />
eccentric" falling prey to this problem."<br />
<br />
I asked the good doctor how such people can be spotted and<br />
institutionalized for their own good.<br />
<br />
He gave the following indications.<br />
<br />
1. Their homes lack most furniture, having only the bare essentials.<br />
<br />
2. Everything is spotlessly clean except for the television set which will<br />
have a layer of dust on the screen.<br />
<br />
3. The bed is never made.<br />
<br />
4. There will be six or seven phone lines to the home.<br />
<br />
5. Only computer manuals will be present, no other books.<br />
<br />
6. The men will be almost universally divorced (no women have fallen prey<br />
to this yet despite the fact that some of the pathological personas<br />
are women) or be on the verge of divorce.<br />
<br />
7. Their children, if any, will have run away from home. No very young<br />
victim has had any children.<br />
<br />
8. Sexually, they will be inactive. At least, they won't reproduce.<br />
<br />
9. As with alcoholics, they will be scrupulously careful to report to<br />
their jobs each day but they will be uncreative and rarely be<br />
promoted to positions of responsibilities. Not because of lack<br />
of abilities, but because they will evade the extra time necessary to<br />
accomplish these goals.<br />
<br />
10. The refrigerator will contain only spoiled potato chips and half-opened<br />
cans of beers. Many of these users drink soft-drinks because of the<br />
high sugar content. One institutionalized case had not eaten in six<br />
days. He was found by the police in a small grocery store, after<br />
closing hours, with open bags of chips and six-packs of Cokes<br />
lying about, laughing hysterically and trying to dial out on the<br />
computerized cash register. When they saw the thick glasses and<br />
the plastic pen holder in his pocket, they notified Dr. Sands.<br />
<br />
The United States government has tried unsuccessfully to introduce<br />
electronic bulletin boards in the Moscow area so our geniuses are similarly<br />
engaged in fruitless labor.<br />
<br />
The great Pavlov once pointed out that to hypnotize a chicken, you mere<br />
ly need to draw a chalk line along pavement, place the chicken so its<br />
legs are on either side of the line and it will freeze. Human beings<br />
require a more complex hypnotic tool and television has served the state<br />
well over the years.<br />
<br />
Now, such a hypnotic tool has been found for the intelligentsia. It's<br />
even got them talking to themselves.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Translated from PRAVDA<br />
Translation (c) 1987 by Yves Barbero<br />
</pre><br />
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[[Category:Essays]]</div>Netfreak