I’ve spent a lot of time at the computer over the last couple of days, even more than usual, grappling with phrases like “business plan writers” and fiddling with WordPress templates. All of which I find perfectly satisfying.

Recently someone looked at my MacBook, pointing out the places where my hands have discolored the case and the corner where strapping tape is covering a little busted place (a common flaw in this generation of machine.) “Doesn’t that drive you crazy?” she asked.

“What?”

“The dirty places and the tape.”

Shaking my head, I pointed to the screen and said “In there. That’s what I pay attention to. What’s going on in there.”

About a hundred years ago when Helen Reddy was a popular singer, she did a little number called “Angie Baby.” The lyrics were something like:

You live your life in the songs you hear
On the rock and roll radio.
And when a young girl doesn’t have any friends
That’s a really nice place to go.
Folks hoping you’d turn out cool.
But they had to take you outta school.
You’re a little touched you know, Angie Baby.

It’s a sort of Carrie-esque song that hit #1 on the Billboard charts at the end of 1974. Angie doesn’t turn the prom into a bloodbath, but she does suck an evil neighbor boy into her possessed radio and trots him out at night to do with as she pleases. In the interim I guess he sleeps between the resistors and wonders if she switched to an 8-track, could he get out when she ejects the tape.

Although I’m not a gamer, a pastime that really does suck people into a virtual landscape, the interior world of the net is quite real for me, a place where I happily move down well-trodden paths. Given that, consider these numbers from internetworldstats.com:

- Estimated population of North America: 340,831,831
- Internet users in 2000: 108,096,800
- Latest internet users: 252,908,000
- Population penetration: 74.2%
- Growth 2000-2009: 134%

If that doesn’t constitute a real, alternative reality capable of sucking you right in, I don’t know what does. Given the exponential growth of devices that get us online where ever and when ever we please, I would imagine this whole landscape will be radically different in another five years, a difference I’m looking forward to with avidity.

And I promise, if I find Angie’s boyfriend in here, I’ll try to help him hitch a ride out on a BitTorrent download. That’s assuming of course the nutjob finally got a CD player and ripped the poor guy into the guts of her iPod.