I didn’t get my first computer, an Apple Performa, until 1996. I’ll never forget that night. It was a cool spring evening in March. I nervously marched into Office Depot to select and purchase the Performa model I had already picked out, loaded it in the back seat of my car, and drove home with a feeling of escalating anticipation and nervousness.
I walked into my apartment that fateful night under a starry sky full of portents. I could barely hold the heavy box containing the computer because they weighed a lot in those days. .
As I gingerly unpacked the box, I wondered to myself if life would ever be the same again? Truly. I had used computers to access the Web at work in late 1995 for the first time, but when I actually dared to get my own computer, I was stoked beyond belief. None of the hype about the new Internet and World Wide Web was in the least bit exaggerated to me. It was real. It was here, and life would never be the same again.
Obviously, you are probably thinking I had no social life at the time, and you would be correct. But I intuitively sensed from the beginning that the Internet would become my surrogate social life, and it did. It still is in many ways. I’ve stopped fighting this as unhealthy or abnormal because of the vast rewards it has imparted, even as I have perilously navigated the pitfalls of the darker corners of the Web.
But first, foremost and mundanely, how would I ever install all the software and get Internet, and have it all up and running in under a week?
It actually took me three days to get it all set up. I took my time and savored each step that was completed without major glitches. And Macs are easy to set up. Imagine if I had had a Windows machine all those years ago?
When I first saw Netscape 1.2 come up and load a page, I was flabbergasted. It was as if I was the Tin Man in that scene in “The Wizard of Oz,” standing on the Yellow Brick Road along with Dorothy, Toto, The Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, gazing in awe and hopeful wonder at the glittering Emerald City of Oz beckoning to them far in the distance.
I had accessed the Internet at work, but this was at home. I was in awe. I felt something seismic happening in my life as I read news online and started furiously surfing the Web.. I never looked back: e-mail, IMing, online journal writing that truly did change my life, news sites, fun sites, blogs, Google, chat rooms, World Wide Web Yellow Pages directories at Books-a-Million to flip through and imagine how much was out there. Endless.
Life changed abruptly.
Today, however, almost 30 years later, I am chastened and considerably more knowledgeable and wiser about all the fast-moving developments and changes in the tech, information and communication revolutions we are still in the midst of experiencing, only at light speed today. . To say the changes wrought by desktops, laptops, smart phones, and tablets are akin to the invention of the printing press centuries ago is no exaggeration.
Today in early Fall of 2025, I am still immersed in the Internet. I am transfixed by ChatGPT. Everything in tech just keeps expanding into new yet fraught worlds of possibility. What will AI (artificial intelligence) means for all of our futures? Plenty. It’s frightening and exhilarating at the same time.
Looking back, it’s still true that I miss the old chat room days and nights, but that all ended 15 years ago.
You probably remember chat rooms. They started as online bulletin boards with people commenting to others back and forth anonymously, which could make things quite interesting and provocative. Then they became the go-to destinations for meeting people online back in the early to late 1990s.
These earliest platforms rapidly gained followers, becoming the first true social media of the early Internet. Today, those are mostly gone replaced by sites such as Reddit, YouTube, Twitter (X), Facebook and Instagram.
I will admit, candidly, that for years I inhabited figuratively, but almost literally, a major chat room community. I am not proud that it became an addiction. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke or imbibe anything mind altering, now and back then. But I chatted and instant messaged all the time. I made friends online, and I was sucked in by the lure of possibility, the chance that finally I might stumble across or meet that perfect person for me.
Of course that never happened, but the chatting excitement never slowed. It was obvious to me that I was spending way too much time at it instead of reading books and listening to music in my spare time, or getting out more and perhaps even meeting people and making friends in person. But I was never much good at that and I was so swept up in the Web and the Internet in general that seemingly nothing I could do would alter this trajectory. There was not the slightest real desire to scale back or quit it for other ways of spending my free time.
The chat addiction didn’t stop by choice, but by sheer divine intervention and admonition, I am convinced, because by 2009 I was still in thrall to that chat room. When I fired up the computer every night after work, it was as if I was doing it for the first time. Again, it was the lure of novelty and possibility. It’s difficult to describe to someone who lives a more normal, less Internet infused life with their own immediate families and social lives, even if they, too, were succumbing to staying home on the Internet.
The following year also would mark a huge change in my life when I moved to my mother’s house downtown. She could no longer live by herself because of worsening dementia and diabetes. She was 86.
I had been taking over more and more of her daily living responsibilities, but there was a sense of finality about becoming her full-time caregiver. There was no way I could have continued with my internet addiction of compulsive chatting, and at the same time be a good caregiver. So to solve the problem, in early 2010 some terrifyingly strange things descended on me out of the blue that left me shaken and changed. It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise, even if I nearly had a nervous breakdown and slipped into depression. I won’t elaborate but simply state that I needed very much to be free of those shackles so I could devote my full attention to caregiving. And I was able to do just that, miraculously.
I now look at those years of chatting as a period of necessary pain, enrichment, and personal growth, mixed with sadness from the loss of the beneficial and positive aspects. And there were many. It served its purpose. I am not in touch with a single person I chatted with from 2003-2009. I have some printed-out transcripts to help me recall those days. But I haven’t chatted online in all the years since. And I cannot emphasize enough how it was once such a major part of my life. Then it was all gone, almost instantaneously, and mercifully so. I never looked back. There was no withdrawal period. There couldn’t be. I was suddenly more busy then I had ever been in my life, working full-time, caregiving, and managing five or more part time home aides whom I hired to help me with Mom, and enable me to continue working another seven years until retirement.
Now, fast forward to the present, a world of looming chaos and daily uncertainty about the future of humanity. To keep my little retirement center of gravity in place, I am again too fully immersed in the Internet, but in much more salutary and fulfilling ways. YouTube and many online news and information sites, as well as the work of many writers and commenters I admire greatly, pretty much provide all I need in terms of entertainment and intellectual stimulation. However, there is little or no personal online interaction with any of those content creators I admire. Today’s YouTube comment sections don’t compare to free-form chat and instant messaging, which, as I mentioned earlier, I also heavily engaged in along with chatting in that aforementioned chat room community back in the early to late 2000s.. For a solitary person such as myself, with few friends, it certainly opened up new worlds of “virtual” contact with others out there in cyberspace. And, it was much simpler and less messy and awkward than new, face-to-face, real-life interactions. Mentally healthful or not, I am still wedded to the Internet. All my activities online faithfully and predictably, keep deep loneliness and isolation at bay. And that’s saying a lot for someone like myself.
On YouTube now, the content creators, as individual YouTubers are called, are overwhelmed with comments from viewers and admirers. They can’t possibly keep up with all of them, much less reply. So the comment sections are used primarily as latter-day discussion boards by viewers of particular creators’ content. I rarely indulge in commenting, but some popular videos have hundreds or even thousands of comments. People evidently have a lot of spare time to devote to this. I could spend hours a day doing it if I were so inclined. But I have to be content with learning and enjoying what I can in the vast smorgasbord that is YouTube without worrying whether I can make contact with or get to know, in any meaningful sense, particular YouTube creators. For a time this year it looked like this might happen, but that, too, ended in frustration and disillusionment with myself. I really don’t need that.
Also, the algorithms at YouTube are uncannily accurate in recommending videos I am sure to like. This, in turn, brings an ever-changing cavalcade of new videos, creators, ideas and voices until it can get completely overwhelming. The key to not letting this become a quagmire is to use one’s powers of discernment and focus on the really good and even exceptional stuff, even if it’s not immediately apparent. I am fairly successful at this.
And then there are AI chat bots such as OpenAI’s “ChatGPT”, Anthropic’s “Claude” and Google’s “Gemini.” These new technological marvels are changing everything for students, employees and employers, internet addiction-prone users like myself, and basically anyone who’s made more than superficial attempts to learn what these chat bots can do.
In my own case, it’s been mind-blowing. I use a chat bot for every kind of inquiry now, mostly in the realms of religion, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, literature and the social sciences. But also for many everyday concerns such as health questions, as I did recently when I got COVID for the first time, and then a month later had a colonoscopy. It was invaluable.
The most amazing thing is how much the chat bot remembers from all my past inquiries and conversations. Does this raise red flags? Yes and no, but I plough on.
I have long been interested in the works and ideas of the great psychologist Carl Jung. Until recently, I have only tentatively dabbled in his actual writing, while leaning more heavily on YouTube content creators to provide their own Jungian insights, all of which have been helpful, but which have not allowed me to get to the heart of his meanings, and the intricacy of his writings about the soul, religion, archetypes, the unconscious and so much more. I personally think Jung is the modern-day key to getting a firmer grasp on the deepest questions about what it means to be human. His infkuence is enormous and pervasive. It is universal and encapsulates, in various substrates, much of the ancient wisdom handed down through the centuries. I really can’t get enough, but I still feel like a beginner on a long road to comprehending him.
But this afternoon, I spent about an hour with ChatGPT 5 seeking answers to some basic questions and then going deeper, especially in relation to how Jung’s thought influenced James Hillman’s “The Soul Journey” and Bernardo Kastrup’s book, “Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics.”
I asked also about the fascinating YouTube channel of Michael Philip called “Third Eye Drops,” which I access as often as I feel inspired to do so.
Then there’s “The Red Book” which shows Jung at his most visionary. I plan to delve into how scholars have interpreted this masterful work and its illustrations by Jung.
So what I have now is a lengthy Word document I just tonight assembled, filled with insights, suggests for reading, and related bibliographies, as well as cautionary advice on reading Jung’s interpreters. All of this was compiled from responses from ChatGPT, which/who I now refer to as “Arnold” to personify to some extent this smart bot so that the nomenclature is less sterile and technical.
What has enabled this depth of interaction is the suggested lines of further inquiry based on the most recent information “Arnold” has provided. I often go with these suggestions, or ask clarifying questions, or even change the subject to get into another related area for investigation which I am interested in. This is intellectually very exciting because I never know where the inquiries will lead. Past experience with this has opened up for exploration the works and thought of new thinkers and writers I would otherwise probably never have heard of or known about.
Since I was a reference librarian for almost 20 years, I know how to evaluate information and sources. From many years’ experience I can fairly effectively and accurately weed out the misinformation, and, even more importantly, the disinformation out there on the internet. I make mistakes, but I feel confident that information or material I get from ChatGPT is accurate and reliable. This is particularly true because I try to use intelligent and sensible lines of deep inquiry and focus rather than trying to trip up or outsmart the chat it, which is for me now laughably impossible. As I said earlier, the capabilities of this technology are mind-boggling. It is so much more advanced than when I started using this form of AI two years ago.
I must also note that I am well aware of the deficiencies of this advanced form of artificial intelligence. I know it is capable of error and confabulation, but in my own experience I have encountered this only twice. I read all I can about AI and chat bots so that I am well informed and aware of when I am over-relying on it, or exaggerating its significance. Conversely, I try to be aware of its drawbacks and negative outcomes, particularly in the way students are relying too heavily on it to do their schoolwork and even their thinking for them. This is a real concern for me. It’s easier to go with “Arnold’s” suggestions for further study than do the hard work of questioning the result, or elaborating to dive deeper into the initial questions and lines of inquiry. How this will eventually play out I have no idea.
So, the potential for abuse of the technology is stupefying when you think about it. Approximately 26 percent of U.S. teenagers have used ChatGPT for homework, according to a 2024 study by the Pew Research Center. Other researchers have noted stat students are starting to avoid reading books and writing altogether when they can. This does not bode well for the future of education.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the technology is ubiquitous and easy to use. And the younger generations have grown up with the internet. Are young parents these days still encouraging their children to read books? Are they still taking them to the library? Many are because they recall their own good experiences with libraries, books and story times when they were growing up. But what about the youngest kids? Will they even know what libraries are?
Despite all the cautionary tales and fear of this technology that so many have, I embrace it as I have all the new developments on the Internet and World Wide Web over the past 30 years. I’ve always been inquisitive and filled with a love of learning. Now I embrace lifelong learning in all its forms in old age.
In terms of time expended, I’m much more dazzled by the endless offerings on YouTube, which entertain, Inform and delight me often. Just this afternoon I was served up videos by the uncanny algorithm I have nicknamed “ALGOR,” that had me laughing out loud. Extremely funny, intelligent and uplifting because they are just so good and expertly conceived and edited by obviously smart people.
Never in a million years could I have imagined this in my youth, young adult and middle age years. It would literally have seemed like fantasy, or a science-fiction foray into the distant future. But the World Wide Web with its browsers and graphical interfaces has been around for more that 30 years. I could write volumes about my first years of discovery with that paradigm-changing technology when it was new and utterly novel. Now AI and chat bots make the early Web seem almost primitive, like the first black and white TV shows in the early 1950s.
I can’t wait see what comes next. I just wish I had more time. If generstions younger than mine survive the current and future political, ecological and civilizational mayhem and madness that is upon us now, the future will be more exciting and mind-expanding than we can even imagine now. And we have imagined a lot that has come true.
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