While the Internet, instant messaging and e-mail have been great technological advances for mankind, the forced resignation of Hawaii Tourism Authority chief executive Rex Johnson shows one of the downsides of such rapid information transmission.

Without going into the gruesome details, Johnson apparently got into trouble for forwarding sexually and racially offensive e-mails that landed in his office computer inbox. I believe he claimed that he did not even actually read some of the odious messages that he sent on to others in his e-mail directory. It proves that while communication today is a sextillion times faster (10 to the 21st power) than it was in the old days (1973 to 1976), you can also get into trouble sextillion times faster than in the old days, especially if any of your electronic emissions involve “;sex.”;

Think about it. To get into the kind of trouble in 1973 that Rex Johnson got into today, he first would have had to receive a letter delivered to his office by the U.S. Postal Service, probably by stagecoach. He would have had to open the envelope; read the message (or not read it); copy the message 10,000 times using the technology of the time, a hand-cranked mimeograph machine; stuff, stamp and address 10,000 envelopes by hand; and then get them to the post office when it was open (Tuesdays and Thursdays between 1 and 1:15 p.m.), in time for the stagecoach to get the mail to the steam-engine train. Then, after several weeks, people would get his messages and one of them have to be offended enough to rat him out to his boss.

  Today, all Rex had to do was hit the little button on his e-mail screen that said “;Forward Message”; and in a sextillionth of a second, Rex Johnson's $240,000-a-year position as head of the tourist authority went bye-bye. Man, that's technological progress!

Of course, in the old days, no one would have thought about forwarding copies of mail onto others, unless it was a really scary chain letter. And you know what? Nobody should be forwarding all the crap that comes into their e-mail inboxes to other people, either. It's just another example of how technology so mesmerizes people that they behave in ways that they never would have if they had to do something other than sit on their butts and hit a button on a computer.

E-mail programs should make it harder to screw up your life. Maybe after you hit the “;Forward Message”; button the computer should ask you, “;Do you REALLY want to do this?”; Followed up by “;Really?”; And “;I mean it, seriously?”; Then “;OK, idiot, this is your last chance ... yes or no?”;

It's even easier to fall into the Rex Trap because we all get unsolicited, offensive e-mails all the time. I got an e-mail recently whose subject line said “;Noted Pediatrician Gets to the Bottom of Diapers.”; I not only immediately killed the message, I ripped the hard drive out of my computer and stomped on it. There were sextillion reasons to do so.