By Art Gillis

First, I must tell you that my wife and I are complete opposites. I call her analog. She calls me digital. She’s an artistic person seeing shape relationships that I couldn’t discover if I had the benefit of a ten-year exile at the Institute of Computer Aided Design. She looks at a house and instantly relocates the placement and scale of the windows. Ask her about a “9” and she’ll talk about its lack of symmetry and top heaviness. I’ll describe it as 1001, its binary bit configuration. There are hundreds of versions of the color white. A nine is a nine no matter where you are. So just imagine these two people trying to reach a harmonious level of understanding with regard to the Internet. For my part, I psyched up myself to adopt the persona of sweetness, a word that I never associate with men. Here’s how I will start the process before we even get within 50 yards of a PC.

• Give up everything human, logical, mother’s teachings and Emily Post. The Internet is made up of billions of “robots” that can’t react to the statement, “You know what I mean.”
• What normally works when a human is involved gets rejected when the Internet governs. I filled out a form online recently and provided “M.” as my first name. After completing the entire form, it was rejected with a note in red saying, “enter a correct first name.”
• Don’t waste your time communicating with a Web Master or “info@.” You’d be as foolish as if you wanted to speak to a highway billboard. No one will answer.
• Be absolute. Just like when you tell me to pick you up at 6:00. Not 6:00ish or around 6:00. Computer technology is very absolute. A 9 is a 9, not 8.99999999.
• When asked your mother’s maiden name, just give it to them, and pray that even when you get old, you’ll never forget it.
• 98% of the e-mails you receive will be junk or scams. After a while you’ll be able to spot them. For now, beware of anything with the words “friend, congratulations, account, paypal, ebay, diet, health, low-cost, plural representations of some words such as informations, and anything having to do with the stock market.” And don’t waste your time with anything from a bank. Banks don’t use e-mail except the quintessential marketeer of all time - Citibank.
• When you send text, especially to family, write it as a document first so you can edit the heck out of it. Then paste it as an e-mail and send it. Writing online is hazardous. You can’t fix misinterpreted words once the e-mail is sent.
• There will come a time when someone tells you they didn’t get an e-mail you sent. Don’t believe it. The Internet has spawned an entirely new compendium of excuses to cover up blame. Just take it in stride.
• Booking reservations can be risky. Spending two hours surfing for the cheapest hotel rate might save you 10 bucks, but the third party will take your deposit in a microsecond. Remember when you booked directly at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC and had to cancel due to the flu? The nice lady not only canceled but wished you a speedy recovery.
• Search engines are electronic encyclopedias and then some. The more words you give them the better your search results will be. And this is one time you can believe the word “free.” And don’t worry about how Google makes money. If you had invested your funds in Google when it IPO’d, you’d be one rich chick today, about five times the $85 price I advised you to use your funds to buy it.
• Learn to curb your emotions. The Internet is technically less than 20 years old. Eliminate the first five years as experimental, and you are now dealing with a 14-year-old technology. Did you know everything there was to know when you were 14? Don’t answer that.
• Finally, use the Internet as an information source and as a message transporter. Do not use it to move money. This is from your loving husband, even though my loved clients would consider this advice a form of professional suicide. Bankers want the Internet to do all their dirty work so they can just focus on “Have a nice day.”

Catch ya’ later when the first step will be: How to turn on the computer.
What’s that book in your hand? A primer on the Internet. Burn it. I’m all the technology education you’ll ever need.

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