Quoted: Vintage Views about the Internet

"All the geniuses with computers love to tell you you can talk to people all over the world if you're on line. Who wants to? You want to talk to people all over the world? People don't talk to the guy next door. . . . People are standing in an elevator -- do you talk to anybody? A guy calls you up and he's got the wrong number -- do you start a conversation? Do you ever say, "Sure glad you got the wrong number!" You're gonna holler, "You got the wrong number!" And God forbid he calls you again: you think he's a stalker, you call the police.

"People are nuts, you know that? . . . They're crazy about computers. . . . Last week a guy calls me: 'I spoke to a guy from Siberia, a mountain climber from Siberia." . . . If a mountain climber from Siberia came over to your house and said, 'Hello, I'm a mountain climber!' Would you say, 'Come in, I'm dying to talk to you! All my life I wanted to talk to a mountain climber from Siberia! It's my greatest dream!'"

Jackie Mason in the NY Times, 1996, "Taking a P.C. to the Toilet"