This piece will not begin with a bad joke about the information superhighway.

Really. Truly. There's only so much you can read about "virtual off-ramps" and "cyber-traffic" without vowing to find--and somehow quietly dispose of-- the person who coined that descriptive terms for the Internet.

Fortunately, the awful overuse of "Information superhighway" references seem to have been at a minimum at Harvard during the past few years.

But that's not because no one talks about the Internet Phenomenon--far from it. In my four years at Harvard, the network has exploded into campus consciousness, co-opting students, faculty, administrators and anyone else who can manage to wheedle and account out of Mother Harvard, otherwise known as fas.harvard.edu.

But(something that may be shocking to the young 'uns) it wasn't always this way. In fact, anyone who's been at the school for, oh, four years or so should be able to remember the days before the 'Net explosion. Before room connections, Before extracurricular organizational newsgroups. Before the computerized housing lottery. Before, well, before Unix enveloped the whole campus in its erratic grip.

When I came as a naive and wide-eyed first-year, the Internet was around. I got my account in the first few months and passed by the Science Center computers on the way to class. Occasionally, someone would mention an e-mail mailing list or something, but that was it.

True, I wasn't in computer science or regular science classes, and I wasn't in any computer-oriented extracurriculars either. But according to the Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services, only 60 percent of my class had a personal account by the end of the 1991-92 school year, and if the rapid growth in e-mail messages sent is any indication, we used our accounts less than our younger counterparts.

Three years later, more than 80 percent of the class of 1995 had an account. Not bad, but it pales in comparison to the 90+ percentages among juniors, sophomores and first-years.

The class of 1995 is part of a disappearing breed--Harvardians who remember the days before the Internet rose to such a prominent place on campus. No one ever mentioned putting the Yard Bulletin on the 'Net when we were first-years. Nor did any administrator publicly speak of activating those data connections in the dorm rooms.

Well-Known campus publications--Crimson, Salient, Perspective, Independent, Peninsula, et al.--didn't write about the network; that was for computer publications. And by and large, the class of 1995 didn't know enough to press for more coverage. As James Gwertzman '95, member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Committee on Information Technology, says, "We're almost dinosaurs compared to the frosh."

What caused the shift? The activation of the first-year data jacks and the eventual activation of the upper-class data jacks were key factors.

But the administration has played a part too. The amount of pertinent information available on the campus network, like the amount of e-mail sent over it, grows in leaps and bounds. Phone numbers? Courses? Library book call numbers? Pull up a networked computer, and it's there at your fingertips.

In Some ways, Harvard has become the ideal Internet community. No, the system isn't perfect, or the system managers flawless , or the administration fast moving. But think about it. Everyone in the community has free access to a wide variety of options--e-mail, newsgroups, World Wide Web, ftp, etc.

While some people rely on moderns, direct connections to a high-speed network are widely available. Although official help lines aren't always useful, there are enough" unofficial" experts around to give you help if you need it. The administration has been wise to encourage the spread of the Internet on both an official and an individual level.

And the Internet users themselves are a fairly diverse bunch. I don't know the exact male-female user ratio, but among the undergrads at least, it's much better than the 80-20 national ratio. And while computer nerds certainly have a strong representation on the net, jocks, poets and future investment bankers play their part as well.