Just asking, but how much do we really need to know?

Lie still, I told myself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Maybe Brad will think you're asleep and then you can get up and get online.

IT WASN'T PORN. It wasn't illicit conversations with my no-tell lover. I was simply burning to get back online to look at houses on Realtor.com.

That's when I knew I had a serious problem, because the whole situation kept reminding me of this guy I once interviewed for an article about pornography. The guy would get up from his bed, from his warm sheets, from the side of his living, breathing, satin-skinned wife and sneak out of bed to look at porn online.

I thought that was insane. What kind of person would do that? What kind of person would feel so compelled? I guess that under the right circumstances I would.

We're moving this June. Since the last time we looked at houses, the amount of information available online has exploded. On Realtor.com I can find every house in a certain area in my price range. It isn't just a listing of every 4 bed/2 bath/eat-in kitchen in Northern Virginia. Instead, they have 25 pictures. Virtual tours. Floor plans. Satellite photos that show the nearest strip mall. Exact distances to the Pentagon and Target.

I've spent so much time online I can tell if a real person lives in the house or whether this was a house somebody flipped. I recognize the signs that someone has been watching "Designed to Sell." I get a little zing every time I go to zillow.com to find out how much the neighbors paid for their house.

It isn't just the house itself that obsesses me, either. I can get on goodschools.com and compare test scores for different high schools and read testimonials from parents and students. I can find out which high schools have lacrosse teams and what their records were last year. I can look at team pictures and try to figure out if my kid is tall enough to play. I can Google the coach to see if he was ever arrested.

I search and search. It feels like a good thing. It feels like I'm helping my family. I'm finding out all the information I'll need to make an informed decision about how to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And still I hear that pornography addict in my head telling me that being online was so addictive because you can tailor the kind of information you take in to exactly suit your tastes. That there is always the lure of more. That you are always certain that the next thing is going to be the perfect thing.

This is the trouble of our age. There used to be a natural stopping point for information. You had only so many hours to go through the green periodicals book at the library and request back copies of magazines. You could only get the news that was delivered to your doorstep or administered by Walter Cronkite. The MLS was a mystery perceived only by a professional band.

Now we have more information available to us than we will ever really need. We'll have to be a generation that learns when enough information is really enough - and that everything else is just information porn.

jacey eckhart, jacey87@mac.com