"I've been doing that on my computer for quite a while now," I said to the wide-eyed newbie, hiding my crossed fingers behind my back. How many times have I perjured myself with a sentence like that? Then I'll turn around and utter something like: "You mean you've never been on the Internet?" (Gasp! She's a newbie.)

As I say this, I look down my nose-as if I (poor Norsk) had one long enough-causing the person I'm talking to to shrink. If she knows anything about the Internet, she would know that a newbie is a newcomer, a beginner, tyro, greenhorn-in itself a lowly status-but given the immense popularity of the Net, she'd also be a latecomer. As if this were a double brand of shame.

Run for the border. When was the last time you pretended to know something about computers that you didn't really know? Or that you professed to having experience you didn't really have? Poke, poke. Nudge, nudge.

Some of this behavior fits under the heading of "professional chutzpah," (alternatively, self-promotional B.S.), a tool all professionals have used at one time or another-in order to look good, provide reasons for employment or advancement, and in general to seem worthy of whatever title they carry at the time. I know people who do this without thinking, habitually, even when they know what they're talking about. But most of us have our own B.S. borderline, and when we cross it, we know it. We cross our figurative fingers, and hope like hell that our victim won't get back to us for another week so we can run off and bone up on the subject. (I've learned a lot of things that way.)

Trying to sound smart

Then there are those really dumb moments, when somewhere down in the id or ego (I get this Freudian stuff confused) you say something that sounds knowledgeable-but that is actually wrong-and you know it: "Oh yes, I've seen that before. Windows 95 is like that; it just reboots by itself. It's a memory conflict, for sure." It's a kind of face-saving device, frequently applied even when it's unnecessary. In most cases, the recipient of your "wisdom" (given in the form of some kind of info-bite), wouldn't have missed it if you'd never mentioned it. But you just had to say it.

Later, in the quiet of your own mind, as you review the day (or the event) you recall the stupid moment, wince, and vow you'll never do that again. Until it happens the next time, of course.

Falling behind. I bring this subject up not because a good embarrassment is purgative, but because I think a lot of people are falling behind the technology knowledge curve and are having difficulty admitting it, even to themselves. This is happening to corporations too. Witness the witless explosion of Web sites by every company within barking distance of an Internet backbone. It's no secret that most of them have no idea why they have a Web site, other than for keeping up with the Dow Joneses.

What I'm saying here is partly from my own experience and partly from conversations with people who should know better-and are afraid to admit it. From those who are grappling with their first computer encounter to those technically advanced souls who inhabit the netherworld of software development, I hear much the same refrain: "I don't get it. I can't keep up." People who just use computers for their job-and don't actually have to know how they work-are much quicker to pull the ego plug and say, "I don't get it." Those whose livelihood is in computing, however, are more prone to pretend that they know everything there is to know about computers. They are lying. With the rapid advances being made in computing every day, it is virtually impossible for any one person to know it all. And what you know today may not even apply tomorrow.

Figures of speech

Figures of speech. You can't imagine how many computer people, having committed mind, soul, and sleepless nights to learning client/server technology, are now devastated by the possibility that the Internet, Net Computers, and Java are going to make their efforts obsolete-and worse, possibly even philosophically incorrect. I could cite dozens of similar examples up and down the work niches of this industry.

Of course, there's always denial: "Microcomputers are toys. You can't expect me to do serious work with them." "Windows is no threat to the Macintosh." "COBOL forever." You probably have heard similar expressions of intellectual ostrichism. Some of them are laughable; others have become part of our daily conversation. Everyone, it seems, is floundering, but few people are brave enough to admit it.

For three years, I went around saying that object-oriented programming was "OK," "A good idea," and gabbled in a similarly milquetoast fashion about how it was "going to take a decade for some decent tools to appear, and besides there's just so much legacy software around that my customers don't see the need for OOP." And so forth. The real problem was that I knew object orientation was quickly being adopted by all of the major software companies, and that it represented a massive paradigm shift. I was intimidated. I didn't want to commit the time to learning something difficult, something really new. I soon found out I wasn't alone.

It seems like everywhere I go, people are confused-often challenged-by computer technology, unhappily so. This isn't like "the good old days" of early personal computing, when things were also happening at a furious pace, but somehow managed to be comprehensible. Those of you whose memory goes back that far might recall that we waited with anticipation for new products and innovations to happen. I can remember a whole generation of computer nerds who veritably slavered over the thought of the coming IBM AT, or the arrival of the Macintosh SE.

The good old days?

Predictability

One thing was quite different then: We had a pretty good idea of what was coming next. Although it was "new," basically it was merely an improvement on what we already knew-not a whole new technology. The chain of developments that led us through the microcomputer revolution seemed reasonable, and to many, even inevitable and predictable.

Now, things are different. We're experiencing not only normal product evolution, but also a half-dozen or so conceptual revolutions, all going on at the same time. There's the Internet, remote computing, client/server, intranets, consumer computing, communications convergence-you can probably tick off a few more-each one carrying with it a world of technical, economic, and social implications. Big, important stuff, surely, but confusing and mysterious too.

The muddle of change has gotten so bad that the only people who are purported to know what's going on have "visions" rather than scientific facts, rather like latter-day Mahdis or narcoleptic monks. And there are only a few of them, which in itself is scary-would you like Bill Gates to lead you, personally, into the future of technology? Sorting it all out. Somewhere between the fear of learning something new and the fear of admitting you didn't know something, we need to figure out a couple of things: what's real and what's important (at least for us). At the moment, we're having something of a problem distinguishing the cart from the horse. For example:Is the Internet leading the communications convergence? Or will telephone and television technologies become the basis of the new order?

There's also a lingering fear that we may be backing a blind horse pulling a broken cart. The Internet, for example, may be just such a vehicle: For the last couple of years, all we've heard is that the Internet is the new engine of technology, and even our economy. Now we hear talk about imminent collapse of the Internet, of brownouts, and worse, of no profits for online services.

Internet problems

Taken by itself, none of this Internet negativism is unusual. Any major new technology is going to have its problems, as well as a battery of rumors, confusion, and disinformation. But such talk does make it harder to put the Internet, along with all the other Big Movements, into perspective. What do you commit to learning?

No clear answers. If you thought I was ready to dispense some kind of formulaic answer to that question, then you're a newbie to this column. I like posing questions a lot better than answering them. This is frustrating sometimes, I know. But it's occurring to me more often lately that maybe:

1. Clear answers about what technology is valid and important are going to be hard to come by for at least the next generation (thirty years, give or take) and

2. Each decision on what to learn has to be made on its own merits, measured against your own needs. If there is a crumb to be uncovered in this cracker-barrel of philosophy, it's that if you want to stay out of B.S. territory and the swamp of denial, you're going to have to embrace the idea of being more or less a permanent newbie. I know I'm not the first to say this, but it's the kind of thing we need to experience, hear about, and think about-a lot-before it truly becomes a conviction.