Letter to President Obama #14 |Subject: The Internet and Facebook

Dear President Obama,

I was glad to see that you started a Facebook page. I must admit that I don’t understand Facebook myself, as there are too many bells and whistles. The first week I joined, I had about a hundred notifications. I didn’t understand some of them. For instance, I was informed that one of my so-called “friends” threw a sheep at me. I was perplexed, and I still am.

Mr. President, has anyone thrown a sheep at you on Facebook? If so, who? Iran? North Korea? Who throws sheep? I guess I could see sheep throwing sheep, but that’s different. If a big sheep were training for the discus at the sheep Olympics, maybe it’d throw a littler sheep for practice or something. That’d make sense. If that were the case I suppose that the little sheep would be OK; I mean, sheep are essentially walking pillows.

Anyway, I’m not writing because of the sheep matter. I’m writing because I have some concerns about technology. First of all, I know your administration is trying to help improve our access to technology and improve technology education. I’m writing because I’d like to encourage you to set up a national tech support line for the Internet.

I’m doing so for very personal reasons—right now, I’m my mother’s tech-support guy, and let’s put it this way, she calls me an awful lot.

Let me explain: My mother got Internet access a year or two ago. Immediately afterwards, she began using search engines, but on her first day she called me, frantic. The conversation went like this:

Mom: Brett, I think the Internet is broken!

Me: Wha? Whaddya mean?

Mom: I wanted to know if Hogan’s Heroes was out on DVD so I decided to try one of those search engine things. So I tried the first one you told me about, and it didn’t work! Then I remembered about that other famous one, and it was broken too! I just got this “not found” message.

Me: OK, ma, what websites did you try?

Mom: The big search engines you told me about: Goggle and Yoho.

Mr. President, I’ve been getting calls like this ever since. Now don’t get me wrong, my mother’s a lovely woman and the greatest mother ever. (Yes, Mr. President, I think my mom's better than yours. But don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your mom’s nice too.)

Anyway, I’m not the only one with such troubles. I know there are a lot of people who have trouble with technology, and a few people even fear it. For instance, I’ve got these friends who think the Terminator movies are documentaries. Let me tell you, they are terrified that a new one is coming out this summer and shiver if you even mention the word California. They’re convinced Arnold and the robots have already taken that state over. (I don’t think they ever saw the 2^nd or 3^rd movie.)

Personally, I’m not that afraid of evil robots. I mean, think about it—if there were evil robots, they’d probably run on Windows, right? I mean, I can’t even watch half an episode of Lost on the Internet without my computer crashing. Defeating evil robots on Windows would be easy, all you’d have to do is to trick them into doing two simple things at the same time and they’d probably burst into flames. Or at least, they’d freeze and fall over.

Now if Apple made evil robots, we might be in trouble. I mean, they’d probably be all chique and stylishly designed, and everyone would want to be attacked by one, because it’d be the thing to do.

In any case, the national tech-support hotline could help allay these fears, and it could help everyday folks out too.

Thanks for your time.

Take care,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #14 to President Obama. Brett's writing (and sending) one a day.