What do you get when Streisand-listening, Club Med weenies in power suits and toupes try to connect with a music subculture they have never directly experienced? You get Menudo. What do you get when Streisand-listening, Club Med weenies in power suits and toupes try to connect with the Internet subculture they have never directly experienced? You get Jan Brown -- Reform MP from Calgary Southeast. On April 27, Brown's parliamentary assistant Kevin Gaudet issued a letter to "All Internet Users" -- that's us! The letter informs us Brown thinks it's just peachy the Liberals are interested in the "information highway". Brown is now "investigating" how to access email. But "until the office of Jan Brown, MP gets its car on the information highway it can be contacted by phone or by fax." (That is just an opening salvo in highway metaphors -- read on.) Brown warns the government is flirting with disaster. She first raised this warning April 14, standing in the House to enlighten parliament about 21st Century Government. She read what has to be one of the stupidest pieces of political writing ever. In eye's March 5 Internet coverstory, we warned our Faithful Readers to beware strangers talking about the "information superhighway" instead of "the Internet" -- to treat them as one would a cop asking where to get "some good weeeed, man". Well, read this and retch: "Mr Speaker," Brown said, "as members of the 35th Parliament entering the merge lane on the information highway, our government vehicle can be fairly compared with the Model T. Offices which are still equipped with the 286-based computers and no modems make for a very slow entry, and slow travellers better get out of the way for surely they will be run over by communicators using more efficient hardware and software." Apparently Brown's office thinks this vastly clever -- and maybe it makes her look cool to the other MPs in the smoking area behind parliament. But when one shovels away the shameless metaphoring -- "Brown is clearly frozen like a startled deer in the headlights of an onrushing Mack truck called the Internet on the information highway" -- this is what Brown is really saying: Federal government computers are obsolete for participating in the "information highway". Some government offices actually still use 286 computers! How can we ride the highway with 286s?! Other governments will laugh and call us names! Brown concludes: "Let us together make the 35th Parliament one to be remembered for having made smart computer-based connections that put us in the passing lane on the super information highway." Translation: "Let's buy a bunch of funky new 486 computers fast!" Buying 486s for accessing the infohighway is questionable. They will be obsolete by the time government ploddingly buys and connects and trains -- if they aren't already obsolete. (Brown is right about the lack of modems -- but not having them doesn't "make for a very slow entry", it makes for no entry.) Let's use some round figures. New $2,000 machines for 250 MPs, that's half-a-million bucks right there. Why not spend half of that and hire some Internet-literate students for the summer to teach our clueless MPs how to use their 286s just fine on the infohighway? Once a machine is hooked into the Internet, that computer sort of gives up its life, it functions as an appendage of the Internet, it becomes "dumb". A dumb 286 and a dumb 486 won't make any difference for federal purposes _at this point in time_. Multitudes -- yes, multitudes -- of human beings around our beautiful little globe have hooked-in without fancy computers. Thousands of Torontonians jacked into this city's very vibrant BBS community with shitty-little Alex terminals from Bell, or with Commodore 64s, or with Vic 20s. They still do. Toronto's infamous Homolka-info-peddler "Abdul" conducted his underground ban-breaking ring on a 286 -- and all the might of the Ontario attorney general and OPP couldn't outperform Abdul and comrades _because they knew the road they travelled._ The fact that Brown and her advisors think a fancier computer is the Key to the Highway (my apologies Charles Segar and Willie Broonzy) belies her ignorance -- and begs the question what she could she possibly do with her suped-up 486 anyway. Brown's position is a perfect microcosm of how elite and detached government performs at its worst -- never actually part of the life they rule over, they rely on expensive and inefficient information to make expensive and inefficient decisions. One does have to give Brown some credit -- her assistant at least found a way to upload her statement about the Internet _to_ the Internet, This is no small feat! When Stentor (Canada's telephone cartel) made its $8 billion "infohighway" announcement, it forgot to send a copy to the Internet. One assumes it couldn't find it. Politicians should really invest some time in the culture. They should login from their homes, in their off hours. Once experienced. they'll understand what is needed to bring the federal government online -- and _very little_ is needed. The entire federal government could probably come online for less than it cost Mila Mulroney to decorate one room of 24 Sussex Dr. Always conscientious citizens, we at eye have taken the liberty of calling Toronto's Internex Online for the federal government. A nice shiny new account awaits -- fullblown Internet access for 6.5 hours a day. The account is called -- federal-govt@io.org. Just call us up for the password, Jean. -30- K.K.Campbell