Desinterneta

Go calmly amid the ads and spam, and remember what tranquility there may be in screen savers.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with your Network Administrator.

Speak your truth quietly, clearly encoded in MP3 format; and listen skeptically to others, especially the fun and entertaining, they too have their urban legends.

Avoid loud and insistent web sites; they are irritations to the browser.

If you compare your computer with others, you may become proud and resentful, for always there will be greater and lesser computers than yours.

Enjoy your programs as well as your back-up plans.

Keep interested in your own file system, however simple, it can be a real asset in the eventual failures of hardware.

Exercise caution in your surfing, for the web is full of deception.

But let this not filter you from what virtue there is; many webmasters attempt high standards, and everywhere storage systems are full of archives.

Use a made-up screen name.

Above all, do not forge your return address.

Neither be pessimistic about porn; for in the face of all infertility and dissatisfaction, it is unrelenting as the weather outside.

Take kindly the upgrades of the new, gracefully retiring the components of last year.

Cherish frequent backups to protect you in unexpected crashes.

But do not suffer yourself with virtual worlds.

Much terror comes from laziness and stress.

Ahead of accepted regulations, be gentle with your display device.

You are a node of the Internet, no less than the gateways and the routers; you have a right to be online.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the home page in your window to the universe is loading exactly as it should.

Therefore be at peace with the technology, whatever you visualize it to be, and whatever your clicking and scrolling, in the riotous perplexity of computers, keep peace with your operating system.

With all its spam, pop-up windows, and broken links, it still is a beautiful Internet.

Use smileys :) – Strive to be ad-free.

---

Copyright By Don Hodges 2002 October 27-28

This is a parody of the work called "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann, 1927.