Information Superhighway 

"Think of the Internet as an Information Superhighway"

There it is again: Some clueless fool talking about the "Information
Superhighway."  The internet is nothing like a highway.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction.  Suppose highways
were like the net.

A highway hundreds of lanes wide.  Most with pitfalls for potholes.

Privately operated bridges and overpasses.  

No highway patrol.  A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken
whistles.  500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons.

237 onramps at every intersection.  

No signs.  Wanna get to Ensenada?  Holler out the window at a passing
truck to ask directions.

Ad Hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a
single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday
between 7:00 and 9:00.  Other lanes would just shoot you without a
trial for talking on a car phone.  AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking
bus with hundreds of ebola victims throwing dead wombats and rotten
cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home
from kits.  Some are 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top
speed of nine miles an hour.  Others burn nitroglycerine and idle at 120. 

No license tags. 

No Offramps.

Now THAT'S the way to run a Highway system!!