Facing life as an aging punker (and this would be a punker of the mind, rather than uniform--more commonly called a "smart ass") brings a lot of contradictions to the table:

1. I'm getting really close to actually having to pay taxes--of course I'm hoping to stave that one off for at least another year.

2. My job is to evaluate the effectiveness of TV commercials--even though I hate TV commercials and basically think they perpetuate the endless "I need that now" state of mind in basically everyone in America and much of the world.

3. I will (along with my brother), by the end of the year when the merger goes through, own a chunk of one of the ten most valuable companies in the world--AOL Time Warner.

Right after the turn of the new year, the biggest question on millions of people's lips was this: Do we sell out now or wait and see?

What happens when a company valued on way in the future profits (like AOL) merges with a company valued on the immediate future--like what is going to happen next year with all those crappy Warner movies they throw at all of us?

Initially, the answer was simple to many: sell out. Get on a quicker pony and crack the whip. And AOL's stock price went down 20 points.

For my brother and I, the answer was equally simple: we haven't made enough to get out now. So we're holding.

Newsweek had a twenty page spread about the merger (they are not owned by Time Warner, by the way), and after reading all of that, I still didn't know any more than anyone else.

On the surface, things are both good and bad. One, Time Warner still has a nice chunk of debt to pay off (bad). Two, Time Warner owns a cable system that services 13 million homes, giving AOL a big pipeline (good). Three, Time Warner puts out some really crappy movies half the time (bad). Four, has anyone seen all the political cartoons that merge AOL's signature line (You've Got Mail) with the Loony Toons (good, and then overdone and bad)?

So pros and cons. What to do?

Well, as always, I have to turn to my past to get the answer. See, back in the day, I used to go to a lot of shows (live music). First there were all the pop metal shows (everyone from Bon Jovi to Guns N' Roses to Aerosmith) where the best thing in the world was to wade through the bodies close to stage and get lost in the crush. Bon Jovi had the best crush, as 75% of the crushers were female.

As I got older the crush became a pit. Mosh pits to be more specific. As speed metal gave way to good old fashioned punk, the idea wasn't to crush but to bash. And, no matter how one might feel in the morning, it was pretty cool to get pushed and hit and shoved until I was out of breath (or got hit in the head, that usually knocked me out of the pit for a while). The best shows of this type were Rocket From The Crypt, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Rancid.

It's all about connecting with humanity--even though what I'm talking about is a bit violent and sometimes dangerous. We all want to feel the touch--the crush--of other humans. And the Internet, for all of its gimmicks and banner ads, does that better than anything else we have.

When speeds get instantaneous (as cable and wireless transmissions strive to do), it will be better than the telephone, radio or TV. Which is what we want now. We want the bigger, better, faster thing. That's why everyone bought a new DVD player this Christmas (even though the new Star Wars movie won't come out on DVD, just VHS).

And that's why we're sticking with the new behemoth of the business world. Because we're not all gonna get together and try to love one another through acid or mushrooms or any other psychedelic experience. We're gonna do it with wires and chips and neural implants. So maybe good ol' Timothy Leary was right--he was just backing the wrong medium.

Matt Worley's AOL ICQ name is satimousa--which doesn't really mean anything at all.