03/05/99

Notes for Internet Newbies and Other Life Forms

Newbie.

The word has the sound of a playground taunt, and it's almost impossible to say it without sounding condescending, or pitying, or disgusted. But there are many newbies in my life, and thousands more each month in the life of SNET Internet, and, in truth, without them (or you, as the case may be), I would be mostly friendless and unemployed.

So the fact is that newbies are very, very, very important on the Internet. They (or you, as the case may be) provide the raw numbers for business plans of the kind that forecast that, by the year 2005, there will be more people using the Internet than could populate the galaxy, if the rest of the galaxy was habitable, which it apparently mostly isn't. Newbies are also a primary source of dietary fiber for "Unix Gods," without whom there would be no Internet at all. Just ask one.

The first thing a kind and gentle Internet "veteran" will tell a newbie is that, of course, everyone was a newbie once, and that it's OK if you're stupid and ignorant and unschooled, because you have to start somewhere. This is not remotely encouraging, because most "veterans" will proceed to lie through their teeth about how long they've been on the Internet, and how much a newbie needs to know to not be a newbie anymore, and how much they, the "veteran," personally knows that is secret and cannot be divulged. Newbies cannot be blamed, then, for supposing initially that the Internet was developed when dinosaurs walked the Earth by small, furry, bipedal mammals who were, of course, the original Unix Gods and are with us to this day.

The main difference between a "Unix God" and a newbie -- other than that Unix Gods live forever, know more about dinosaurs and are furrier than newbies -- is that a Unix God knows how to use tools and a newbie doesn't. Internet veterans know how to use tools and newbies don't. I think you see where we're going with this. In the early days of the Internet, this was a critical difference, as veterans knew how to use flint to make fire, and could hunt, and cook meat, and had mastered Tupperware, and so on, while newbies subsisted on roots dug from the ground and were largely considered to be, well, prey.

All that has changed. The tools are now accessible to all, cheap, and even free. If you've made it this far (i.e., you're already online, you're reading this) you've either already won half the newbie battle, or you're a veteran with not nearly enough to do, or you're an actual Unix God and my days are numbered in the single digits.

In any case, as an Internet veteran (though I have only been online since the Crimean War) here's the advice I have for newbies regarding the use of Internet tools. There are 10 tips, for no good reason other than that "1" is a good place to start and "10" is a convenient number at which to stop.

1. Learn your browser and your email software. Every button at the top, every menu item was put there for a reason. Some of the reasons may be stupid, useless or inscrutable, but you won't know until you try. Pay particular attention to buttons or menu items that indicate "preferences" or "options." Frequently, you CAN "have things your way," as opposed to the way they were designed by Unix Gods.

2. Discover the utility of the right mouse button, unless you're using a Macintosh computer, in which case this paragraph is completely incomprehensible. Right click on things and discover even MORE menus and buttons and things to do.

3. You can type Internet addresses of your choice into the address bar at the top. This sounds incredibly elementary, but some people don't know. My own father had been online a year, was even handling all his personal finances on the web -- and still thought the only way to get around was clicking on things. "Wow, that's handy," he commented.

4. You will need to download files from the Internet. The ability to locate, download and use files is a key differentiator between a newbie and someone who has no life. The first thing you should do is make a directory on your computer just for downloads. The second thing is to make sure you always put downloads in that directory. The third thing will be to get a tool that will allow you to open compressed files that you download. Mac users need Stuffit, or something like it. For Windows users, WinZip is a good choice.

5. Experiment with search engines. Try different ways of finding the same things. Every search engine does, in fact, have a Unix God assigned to sit and laugh at foolish queries, and generate obscure answers, but you'll get over it. My favorite way to search for something is to imagine a phrase that *SHOULD* be on the page I'm looking for, and type that in, with quotation marks around it. It works pretty well, too.

6. When encountering a form that requests personal information before letting you have what you want (access to a site, a particular file, etc.) try lying first. Make up a name, an address, a town, and pick a different state. It often works, and protects your privacy. The only reason NOT to do this is if you really want someone on the other side to know who you are and how to reach you. If you're entering a contest to win a new computer, for example, and you actually want to win, it would be bad to fill out the form as though you were from somewhere in the Crab Nebula.

7. Maintain a skeptical but unafraid attitude in all things. (See previous column on FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions.) If you back up nothing else, back up personal documents, email folders and address books. (OK, that's three things, but keeping to 10 was harder than I thought.)

8. Take things a step at a time. If you haven't completed steps one through seven, for example, you shouldn't even be reading this. Scroll back up.

9. Visit Learn the Net. It covers everything I'm saying here in far more detail, without the smart-alecky, annoying asides.

10. Don't be afraid to ask for help. The worst that can happen is that you will get advice that will cause you to destroy all the data on your computer, render it inoperable, wreck your marriage or prevent you from getting into a good college. Go ahead, live on the edge.

Because it is how you respond to adversity that ultimately will determine when or whether you will graduate from newbie to a veteran who knows how to cope with Internet trauma. We will save, for another time, describing the path toward becoming a Unix God, which involves either relishing or actually causing adversity, and more suffering than we want to reveal for one day.

Please send questions or comments to web.editor@snet.net.