Dana Bell

The computer monitor was mysteriously on when I entered the room. The screensaver wasn't working, and the screen didn't have the friendly XP logon screen. Instead, it had a blue screen (BSOD) with a message about IPVNMON.SYS and a page fault in a non paged area. Big deal, you might think. But, that's really irrelevant. One of the cool things about the Internet are the search engines. I just plug in the words "IPVNMON.SYS PAGE FAULT" and get links to some possible solutions.

The internet has essentially solved every computer problem I've faced, whether I needed to reburn my BIOS or find out about some software failure. It's cool. Ironically, most of the answers come from individuals, not the big corporate financiers of computers and the internet. Yes, some of the remaining giants, like Microsoft and Adobe have some good resources, but interaction with them is severely limited, which may be reasonable.

Now, you might be thinking that I have a philosophy that people are basically good, and helpful. There are good, helpful and serving people on the internet, both Christian and not. But, only in the last few years has the internet become a universal phenomenon, and the more populated it gets, the more we see the destructiveness of human nature. Spam, porn, spyware, viruses, phishing and other scams abound. These aren't computer anomolies; they are human activities.