This little city (pop.: 16,000) has become the first in the nation to pass an ordinance that outlaws voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act.

"I call this a nonviolent, preemptive attack," said David Meserve, the freshman City Council member who drafted the ordinance with the help of the Arcata city attorney, city manager and police chief.

. . .

The fine for breaking the new law, which goes into effect May 2, is $57. It applies only to the top nine managers of the city, telling them they have to refer any Patriot Act request to the City Council.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it? So did crack cocaine. The analogies are eerie--both involve a pipe (in Apple's case, a broadband pipe), both are cheap, and both offer instant gratification. And both, unfortunately, can cause seemingly normal people to become unhinged.

The first night after Apple unleashed this monster, I strolled (virtually) onto the site and did what I do in any CD store: I browsed around and listened to a couple of songs. No problems so far . . . but then I stumbled across the cheesy old Tom Jones hit "What's New Pussycat?" and figured it could be useful in chasing away unwanted party guests. I clicked the "Buy Now" button. Zap. Onto my hard drive it went, in less time than it took me to consider whether I really needed any Tom Jones. Too late--I owned it, like it or not. I could put it on my iPod, or start a "When Lounge Lizards Walked the Earth" CD compilation. It was too easy. I had to have more. I was hooked.

So as the hours whizzed by, all non-iTunes reality faded away. I had been sucked into a Jobsian Vortex of Doom. Unlike a regular record store, this accursed thing never closes. It's open all night. "Open All Night" . . . wasn't that a Georgia Satellites song? (Click-zap.) Sleep? Who needs sleep? I can sleep when I'm dead, I thought. "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" . . . Warren Zevon! (Click-zap.)

By the time my wife shoved me out of my chair and started downloading Dolly Parton classics, I knew we were on our way to being the Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love of the iTunes set: descending into madness and wrestling for control of the mouse while the "Complete Works of The Troggs" wings its way through cyberspace and onto my hard drive. I started having visions of my formerly happy family living under a bridge while I sat by the road with a "Will Work for Downloads" sign made out of six months of unpaid Visa bills.

Swarm theory is also moving online - into chat rooms, an application Mims is pioneering for military purposes. When a problem develops on the battlefield, a soldier radios a Tactical Operations Center. The TOC intelligence guy types the problem into a chat session - Mims and his colleagues use Microsoft Chat - and the problem is "swarmed" by experts from the Pentagon to Centcom. Not only is the technology changing the way we maneuver, Mims notes, it's changing the way we think.

But the system is not without problems. Because anyone on Siprnet who wanted to could set up a chat, 50 rooms sprang up in the months before the war. The result: information overload. "We've started throwing people out of the rooms who don't belong there," Mims says.

"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat," he adds with a sly smile, "is that everybody has to choosean icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."