So much has happened, and there is so much to learn now, that if those people haven't been coaxed to the keyboard by now, they're never going to be.

I myself have a situation. Though friends and colleagues know me "Mr. Online," I evidently spring from technophobic soil, because none of my siblings has a home computer, much less a modem or Internet account.

My brother Pat is a talented manager with a California manufacturing and sales company. My brother Brian, equally adept at what he does, works for a major San Francisco law firm. They both work with computers at the office. But computers aren't a part of them, the way my computer is a part of me.

This is not a tragic story of promising people shut out from some of the goodness life offers because they're not into computers. But I do wish they were doing it, too, so we could do it together.

Every week, for instance, I e-mail this column to about fifty friends around the world. It is a sensational way to stay in touch with people I have known at different times in my life people in Singapore, Australia, Japan, England, and people right here who for some unaccountable reason don't buy the paper.

When I send out my weekly letter, I admit I'm showing off a little bit. But there has been no exodus of my friends on account of this. They continue to tolerate me, as they always have.

I would love to stay in touch with my brothers the same way, via e-mail, but they just squint at me like puzzled dogs. Why don't I write them letters, they want to know, or simply pick up the phone receiver and dial?

I want to say something like: "Because e-mail is so fast, and nearly free, and fun, and spontaneous. And you can mail each other snapshots of web pages that you think the other would enjoy, or copies of work you've done that you're proud of, or articles or jokes you've come across."

What it really is, is that I know that there is a fateful moment whenever a person considers the prospect of dialing a long-distance phone call or writing out a letter. That moment is one of hesitation, and there have been a thousand times good intentions could not overcome that halting moment that you pondered wistfully, then shrugged and said, I'll do it later.

I know my brothers think that I am a techno-evangelist, that I have found the one true way, and they are dolts if they don't succumb to my fraternal will. So I have to tread gently. Mustn't seem too eager. Can't violate the prime directive.

We have always been a curiously acompetitive clan, ceding vast tracts of expertise to one another. I wound up as the one that used computers, while Pat was almost a computer himself. He is a natural analyst, with a terrific head for facts and order. Before his company installed actual computers in the 1970s, Pat served as a sort of bionic database, holding all the products and variations in his head.

There is one especially notable aspect about Pat. He is a skilled gamesman, winning chess tournaments as a little kid and nearly putting himself through college on his poker winnings. That man loves to play cards, but never found a gaming group in California that would take him in. Sadly, I belong to such a group, but my poker buddies in Minnesota can attest that none of those skills rubbed off on me. It has always seemed to me that Pat could find friends on the net to play chess or bridge with, or read up on tournaments and card scams abroad.

Now, Brian is a musician, an antiquarian really, a collector of blues and jazz records from fifty years ago. Anything that would strike today's music-lover as hopelessly unhip is, to him, the hippest. He's no camp follower -- he really loves that stuff. You can see how such a man would view asynchronous digital transfer as an insult to his private ethic of scratchy analog '78s. I bought him a computer ten years ago, and he hated it so much we almost got divorced. But I can also imagine him locating a group on the web that feels exactly he does, reverential about long-forgotten ragtime, accordion, and calypso bands. There is no nicer feeling that locating another soul who feels the way you do.

My brothers are nice men, but like me, a little slow to put themselves out. And like me, unwilling to subject themselves to the psychic distress of actually doing something on their own behalf. How do I tell them that, for their sort of person, the World Wide Web is perfect? You poke around, you skulk, you do not commit yourself to anything until you are confident you are among the right kind of people.

Then you push a button and say something, and they say something back, and then it's your turn again. Unscripted, undemanding, and as improvisatory as jazz.

I think they would like it a lot.

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