Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 30, 1994                   TAG: 9406030073
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INFORMATION HIGHWAY

I'd like to think this shows us to be eclectic intellectuals of wide-ranging interests.

But, in truth, I think it probably reveals us to be your average, couch potato-like 20th-century schizophrenics.

I mean, in this, The Age of Information, none of us - me included - can seem to decide what it is we need, or want, to know. So all of us are zipping around on one or another Information Highway, without either map or compass.

Take, for instance, Internet, that massive linkage of information systems that has so entranced every kid with a computer, along with every college student, techno freak, weirdo nightowl and librarian in the world.

Admittedly, after only a few minutes' practice, I'm not a skilled Internet user; but I must say that the "information" I've found on The Net, while interesting and even occasionally titillating, has been almost thoroughly pointless. Many of the "resources" were unattributed or unattributable, and most of the opinions were, quite clearly, offered from the outer fringes of humanity.

In an article in the June issue of Playboy, "Confessions of an Internet Junkie," J. C. Herz writes that she's discovered much the same thing. One night, she writes, "My screen began to scroll up and up and up for minutes, spewing thousands of news-group headings, including a Church of the Subgenius bulletin board, five or six Barney the dinosaur vigilante hate groups, a pirate radio forum and the Alok Vijayvargia fan club. The index was breathtaking."

We're talking way beyond E-mail here. Herz discovered "a newfound ability to surf from a gourmet vegetarian round-robin to e-zines and volume upon volume of Chia Pet Trivia," along with news-talk channels, sex-talk channels, virtual space constructions (some of them "so labyrinthine" that they've overwhelmed their computer sites), trivia groups for "Melrose Place" and "Bladerunner" among a thousand other shows and movies, and a host of electronic correspondents who know everything from "what to do with 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate" to where Elvis has been most recently sighted. Indeed, Herz even discovered on-line support groups for on-line junkies!

She was, she confesses, as mesmerized by all this whacked-out trivia as she once had been mesmerized by Saturday morning cartoons.

I've escaped electronic mesmerization so far. But useless information is everywhere, and elsewhere it's harder for me to do without. Last week's "Time" magazine, for instance, includes a list of the last meals of eight executed murderers. I read - and made notes on! - the entire list.

What do I need to know this for? To return to that lame metaphor about the Information Highway: I should know more about where I'm going! Where's that strip-mall-lined wasteland, Knowledge? And, more importantly, where's that glittering capital, Wisdom?

Culturally and societally, we cannot, of course, draw distinctions among our bits of information. We cannot say, "This is wisdom, and so we'll save it, while this is mere knowledge. Trash it." That is censorship, plain and simple.

But individually, it seems to me that each of us needs some help in knowing when to say, "Gee, I don't need to know that."

It was once possible for an educated individual - Galileo, for instance - to know pretty much everything worth knowing. That's no longer the case. So how do I, out here in the Information Jungle, choose what's worth knowing?

This is not, I believe, an idle concern. Children, now as ever, need guidance. And how can I, or anyone else, teach what's necessary, what's valuable and what's basic, if I haven't a clue as to what that is?

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.