Henrietta Hay's Column

I have finally inched my way onto the Information Highway in the lane that reads, "Slow drivers keep to the right." My friend the philosopher was already cruising down the middle lane at a fair speed, and I didn't want to be left behind. And when my computer expert son was here in the spring he got behind and pushed me onto it.

Starting on Internet, or the Information Highway, or Cybernet or whatever you choose to call it, is a little like jumping into the middle of Lake Erie without a life jacket when your swimming skill is at the dog paddle level.

Those of you who are experts on the subject - who are driving easily down the highway -- may want to go get a sandwich at this point while I try, in my floundering way, to talk about what I am doing out in cyberspace. Time magazine defines cyberspace and as, "...the globe-circling, interconnected telephone network that is the conduit for billions of voice, fax and computer-to-computer communications." Now you know.

The part that I use the most so far is E-Mail. Every morning, strengthened by a second cup of coffee, I turn on my computer to see whether I have any mail. The computer automatically dials a local telephone number, which ties me into the system. Somewhere out in space, probably in that big main frame in the sky, my mail is waiting. And I thought the little green men that run around inside the bank cash machines were far out!

Sometimes there is a note from Dave, who may be in Houston or Manhattan or 35,000 feet in the air. Or maybe a brief "hello" from one of my grandsons to let me know the is still able to write. Or a message from a friend here in town reminding me of something I had promised to do. I have a conversation going with a person (I have no idea whether male or female) in Scotland, who was surprised to find that there is desert in Colorado.

I have discussed before, the growth of inter-personal communication as it has developed from the pony express and two-cent postal rates to airmail and fax. With E-Mail we have the ultimate ease in correspondence. I sit here, let my fingers do the talking, hit the "send" button and off it goes into the wild blue yonder.

The Information Highway is best known, however, for the Forums - an infinite variety of electronic conversations going on all the time. They are used for information, research, entertainment, shopping, propaganda and a lot of other stuff, and it takes a road map to navigate through them.

Much to my distress, I read an article recently that reported that there are not many women drivers on the superhighway. The latest figures show that only 5% of Internet users are female.

The Internet was supposed to be gender neutral, since on the forums you have no idea what shape or color the other folks are. But social forces are still discouraging girls from math and science -- and computers. In school it is still the little boys who, as the girls report, "hog" the computers. It is the little boys who have grown up "playing around" with the computers, learning by trial and error, which is the time-honored path to digital mastery.

The little girls grow up to be women, all too many of them suffering from "technophobia." It is not exclusively female, but it is far more prevalent among women. The magazine Working Women in cooperation with Compuserve, generated thousands of responses recently from a survey aimed at professional women. The results partially explain the male Internet. They showed that the women were not on line for play. Whereas men will take the intricacies of the computer as a personal challenge, women are concerned about seeing the practical benefit of the endeavor. One participant wrote, "Women are practical and sensible and don't want to waste time on stuff that doesn't meet their needs."

Caroline Schomp in the Denver Post was as angry as I was at what the article reported. She has the final word. "I want us women to get out of the slow lane on the information superhighway so we can avoid getting flattened." Come on, women, get with it! I just shifted into high gear.