Mmm, Text presented in context understood by left-handed dentists without tonsils

My wife and I have a dial-up Internet connection at home. That shocks a lot of people. They behave as if we were still driving around one of those cars you have to crank to get started, or still huddle around the radio at night listening to FDR tell us there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

It’s not that we don’t see the benefits of faster Internet. It’s not that we haven’t experienced faster Internet. We had DSL at home for about six months, about two years ago. It’s just that, at the current prices our local providers want for high-speed Internet, we just don’t see the point. Take Qwest, our last (and thus far only) high-speed provider. I’m sure they’ve paid off the investment in their phone lines years ago. Sure, they have to maintain things. But $30 a month for high-speed Internet on a phone line for which we’re already paying federal taxes so the company can maintain their lines? Forgive me if I roll my eyes until they’re in the gutter across the street. I know the price is what the market will bear. There are plenty of people out there who think that price is worth the service. But they’re also the people who have cable TV and think it’s great, have cell phone plans for which they spend $50 to $80 a month on and don’t know how they ever survived without it. We don’t have all that. We have T-Mobile’s pay-as-you-go plan, and that works just fine. We’ve dropped $25 on the phone in the past six months. We don’t have cable or broadcast TV. Perhaps, because we don’t have these expenses, we could splurge on high-speed Internet. I’d like to. I’m spoiled by the fiber optic connection I have at work. I have a portion of an e-book I need to read for one of my masters classes this week, and reading it at home, I can tell already, isn’t an option, because the Internet, in all its wisdom, is geared for those people who have broadband of one sort or another.

Yes, Qwest has competition here. But when all the competitors offer basically the same product for the same price, it really isn’t competition, is it? It’s options based on landlines, cable or wireless connection, but nothing price wise that sets one apart from the other. And yet if a municipality around here talks about setting up some kind of broadband network, the local providers quail that the municipality in question is setting up unfair competition. What’s fair about offering “competition” that doesn’t compete on price? This isn’t capitalism at work, it’s hostagism. Free the Springfield Two, Marge! Free the Springfield Two!

Now this week in one of my masters classes – to switch gears – we’re going to talk about context in writing. As if that’s a big revelation. Context is important. Those of you reading this blog expect useless drivel, so that’s what I deliver. But get too far down this philosophical road and you find that if you have to consider every context for the things you write, pretty soon you’re reduced to writing the little message you get on the tab in Hershey’s Kisses, because that’s the only thing that people can agree meaning, no matter the context they may find it in. So forgive me if I don’t get all philosophical when it comes to technical writing. Pay attention to various contexts, yes, but fear that if a tree falls in the wood and contextually someone was expecting it to fall on the beach, nah. If that makes me a mental midget, so be it. I’ll leave philosophy to the gurus. The rest of us have to go to work.