High Anxiety Amid the Pixels : For some, Microsoft extravaganza points up the cultural stress created by technology

While thousands in cities around the world eagerly awaited the first moments of Thursday so they could be among the first buyers of Windows 95, for many people the splashy debut of this software program served only to send their tech-anxiety level deeper into the red zone.

The likes of this marketing phenomenon hasn’t been seen since the debut of New Coke in 1985. The $1-billion extravaganza for Windows 95 also says much about our still uneasy relationship with computers and, more broadly, about the hurtling pace of technological change.

There are an estimated 65 million to 70 million personal computers now in use in the United States. Almost 20% of Americans have computers in their homes, and screens now dot desks in virtually every office and factory.

It’s no surprise that heavily represented among the majority of Americans who still do not own or cannot use a computer are the poor. If income disparities continue to widen, so too will the gulf between the technological haves and have-nots.

But economic measurements aside, the Windows 95 hoopla reminds us of the psychological gulf between the techies and those resistant, if not hostile, to new technology. Perhaps the best indication of that divide is the anxious murmuring that preceded the Windows 95 launching. “What is Windows 95 and why do I need it?” was heard perhaps as often as “Where can I buy it?” (For the record: Windows 95 is a piece of software known as an operating system, which controls the basic functions of a personal computer. Microsoft, the manufacturer, says it will lessen a user’s need to know the precise commands and sequences that most computers require.)

Evidence of the psychological gulf extends well beyond computers. It manifests itself in now-tired jokes about those unable to program a VCR, the stubborn insistence by others on keeping their rotary telephones and the difficulty some still have in distinguishing microwave ovens from toaster ovens.

There is ambivalence even among the technologically savvy. Windows 95 may “make the average personal computer easy enough for the average person,” as its maker claims, but neither software nor hardware has effectively eliminated the problems the computer has created: pornography on the Internet, violent video games, computer fraud. Alas, the program to do that still has some bugs in it.