WHY EMPEROR BILL SHOULD RULE

My computer doesn't work. If you own a computer, I'm sure this admission doesn't surprise you. This morning, for instance, I powered up my new, $3,000 machine, hoping to check my E-mail. I launched (an optimistic verb) a communications program, and double-clicked an on-screen button.

The button refused to respond. I couldn't get my E-mail. When my computer doesn't work, I engage in a few modern rituals. I turn it off, then on again -- the equivalent of throwing a cup of cold water in its face. Or I try starting it while holding down the shift key; that secret handshake tells my computer to load only its most essential programs. Then, I add the one I need, hoping it won't crash my system. I've found that rapping my machine smartly on its side never cures the problem. It does, however, precipitate a brief but gratifying starburst pattern on the monitor, much as if it had been punched in the nose.

My behavior is within the normal range of human-computer interactions. I know an editor at a computer magazine who treats his machine as if it were organic, a delicate ecology of microchips and electric pulsing code. He's put a word-processing program and some bland communications software on it. Nothing more. While every new, cool program comes to him (laser-'em-up games, flight sims, goofy utilities that promise to make his computer bark like a Schnauzer), he refuses to put any of them on his hard drive for fear that doing so would expose it to grave biological risk.

We're not stupid and neither are you. It's 1995 and we're no longer technological naifs. Many of us don't need how-to books like Windows for Dummies or Macs for Dummies because we've been using (or trying to use) computers for more than 15 years. We neither fear them, nor want them to go away. When they work, they help organize our thoughts and simplify our lives. When they don't, we want to rap them smartly on their sides. Repeatedly. Until the nurse comes and leads us to a quiet room.

The problem is not in us, it's in our computers. And I am fed up. I don't want to have to deal with software conflicts and bugs and crashes anymore. I don't want to waste another second waiting at the checkout counter of the grocery store because the cash-machine network is down. I want to be online, not on line. Most of all, I want to read my E-mail without having to sacrifice a tethered goat.

So I offer a modest proposal: Let Bill Gates rule the digital world.

Gates doesn't control too much, he controls too little. Encourage him to finish building his monopoly. Let him manage the flow of bits end-to-end, from the boxes that sit on our desktops to the servers that run mighty networks. Let him provide the digital dial tone for the information superhighway. Look the other way while Microsoft gobbles up cable and telephone companies so it can have a direct information pipeline into every home. Ignore it when Gates colonizes Hollywood and starts running the film and TV industry. Give him Intuit. And throw in the banks too.