The omni-present fingers of technology that have wrapped around this nation are changing the face of the country very quickly and in strange ways that can barely be described.

Congress voted Tuesday to permanently ban the Federal Communications Commission from imposing any sort of access charge on Internet usage. OK, normal enough.

But the impetus behind the bill was a widely forwarded e-mail which asserted a Congressman named Tony Schnell was pushing legislation through the House that would establish a per minute fee on Internet service providers, an extra cost that would obviously be handed down to customers.

Okay, that would be normal enough, except for this one little detail. There is no Tony Schnell.

That’s right, Congress has not spent one single second considering any sort of legislation which would “tax” the Internet. But a roaring flood of constituent phone calls, e-mail and letters drove many Congressman to take action to defeat a measure that didn’t exist.

Somewhere there is a 15-year old computer geek laughing so hard he’s squirting Surge out his nose.

What’s next, a bill calling for strict federal control of the alligators in New York’s sewer system? Probably not, as our nation’s lawmakers are probably too busy conducting an investigation to make sure Bill Gates is coming through on the dollar he owes me for forwarding the Microsoft “tracking” e-mail to five of my nearest and dearest.

Besides being a factory-made monologue bit for Leno, though, this little oddball slice of Washington life is just indicative of how society is changing.

Technology, and the Internet in particular, gives anyone with Internet access the power of mass communication.

The traditional systems of power are breaking down at a rate that has not been seen outside of the realm of science fiction novels.

These very changes will also effect the way we’re going to fight our wars, according to President Clinton.

In a speech Wednesday to graduating Coast Guard cadets, Clinton said the United States “will face a fateful struggle between forces of integration and harmony and the forces of disintegration and chaos. Technology can be a servant of either side, or, ironically, both.”

Clinton went on to make the point that large organized armies are no longer a threat to the nation, and that the true challenge will be fighting dangers such as the Lovebug computer virus and small, technologically advanced groups of terrorists, both foreign and domestic.

Well, um, yeah.

Clinton’s speechwriters apparently have a flair for the obvious.

I’ve had that discussion half-crocked in too many dorm rooms to count, and I am certainly no Rhodes Scholar.

But equally apparent is that if we, as a nation are going to be charged with taking care of these new, decentralized, computerized threats, we should change the way we do the defense business.

Clinton should call for an end to the outdated, embarrassingly sexist and completely irrelevant Selective Service Administration. For the young’ns out there, that means get rid of the draft.

Although most people my age aren’t even aware of it, all American men, able-bodied or otherwise, are required to register with the draft folks within 30 days of their 18th birthday (not the women, though, of course).

Failure to do so can eliminate certain opportunities for student loans and grants, job training, government jobs and, for immigrants, citizenship.

If they are so-inclined, federal agents can also haul you off your couch and throw you in jail for five years, as well as slap you with a quarter-million dollar fine (no such prosecution has occurred since 1985, though).

There has been no draft since Vietnam, but Selective Service officials say the draft is still an important “national insurance policy.” I wish I could defend losing my job by calling my work a national insurance policy.

But it’s probably nothing to get hot and bothered about, some might say.

It’s working fine, so why screw with it, even if it is utterly ridiculous.

Well, the problem is it’s not working fine.

The Selective Service announced Wednesday that about 20 percent of Americans don’t bother to register.

If increasingly more people ignore it, our president says we’ll probably never have to use it and officials are not willing to prosecute those who do defy it, what’s the point of having the damn thing in the first place?

It’s like keeping an extra kitchen table around, just in case, even though it’s missing one leg.

But I guess hoping the government will do something productive and efficient is a pipe dream, as they’ve got that pesky pyramid scheme investigation to worry about.

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David Roepke is a senior in journalism and mass communication.