The Internet: Amazing, Fucked Up, Addictive, Asinine?

[Selenay]

I think that we're living in an age of unparalleled freedom—we're like online cowboys, living in the fantastical proto-reality of what will increasingly become a hyperregulated space. Internet banditos.

I read a response once, on a forum not entirely dissimilar from this one, about what would be the greatest thing you could show someone from two hundred years ago. The original poster postulated that the answer would be the ability to carry in your pocket a device capable of infinite knowledge—a device that allows you to know anything with total immediacy, to talk to anyone in the world without delay—and we use it to mock each other and look at photos of cats.

I think that answer is partially true—we do largely use the internet for its perceived evils—its ability to give us dissociation, to push us further away from people. We also use it for all of its glorious benefits—the ability to meet and talk to and learn from people, globally, and the ability to know everything.

I am already thrilled to see the internet's next incarnation—even/especially if it brings me as much head-hanging shame as the old Geocities and Angelfire websites we thought were soooo cool, a decade ago.