It must be expected that complex machines require at least a minimal amount of time to enable human comprehension; and for computers, we assume great patience.
We assume patience for computers for one primary reason: to add instant convenience to the demands of our daily lives. Writing in longhand has long since disappeared as a common style of notation, because typing requires half the time. Sending letters reeks of extraneous antiquity, because emails arrive instantaneously, photos can be uploaded in mere moments and all that is required of humanity is their hands on a plastic mouse, their fingers pressed to a single, luxurious click.
If it can be said that human beings are constantly challenging themselves to better improve life – as witnessed with the advent of electricity, the wheel, the automobile –perhaps it can also be said that the internet is the highest human achievement of all modern endeavors. Or rather almost…
Whereas communities were once contained to cities, romantic prospects to luck, job opportunities through newspaper classifieds and word of mouth, the world now revolves around the internet as a singular station for all such necessities. Yet if you go back ten years ago the internet wasn’t so vastly multi-faceted, permeated in our daily routines, at best it was an opaque jingo and a cultural anomaly. Back then, one needn’t have concerned themselves with the demands of Facebook, instant media news and the minute to minute run down of some wack job celebrity. To even have had access to the internet back then required being lucky to have a working jack and if you were fortunate a high caliber cable.
Yet now to be without is like a junkie without his fix, is like a cross country Buick without gas, a celebrity without a prominent publicist. It suddenly has become omnipresent and to consider life without it is as unfathomable as a junkie going cold turkey, not to say that the internet is a drug even if it is more addictive than most drugs…
If we are of course to understand an addiction or even let’s call it a predilection one must go to the first drink behind the shed- The shed called Friendster which spore the highly lethal cocktails of ‘Myspace,’ and your personal favorite ‘Facebook.’
Friendster surfaced by virtue of pairing like minded people into smaller communities suggested by common interests and age brackets. Chat rooms existed and lingered in the view of mainstream, modern life as an almost cult-like obsession, fit for people unpopular in the living world. Websites by then had begun to gradually flourish, but were still regarded as luxurious items for progressive businesses. By then the internet was still a world away, an usual and interesting source of new information considered marginally important, and not a world within. When Myspace arrived on the scene and began rapidly expanding in numbers, globally affecting the great outer reaches of our world, everything changed. Suddenly, checking email and other internet correspondence became as essential as checking voicemail. Suddenly, stories of internet stalkers tripled. Suddenly getting intoxicated behind the shed to use a cultural metaphor became a rite of passage and by now a visceral public forum for all to see and participate. Unlike most bars where restrictions exist the only restriction was your ability to tap into an internet signal, bundled and re-bundled into the galaxy…
By now, we had migrated to stories of young girls committing suicide because of cyber bullies out for blood, of girls having plastic surgery because of being constantly taunted. We even had a young girl capture images of herself on web cam as she steadied herself and eventually took her life in front of millions. Your first public death in centuries had now returned….
I point out Myspace in particular, as the main source of internet (internal?) injury for two reasons. Firstly, it appeared before Facebook and introduced the concept of profile sharing. People were then conditioned to build vanity portfolios, pretty picture and catchy bio in tow, to advertise themselves to other members and thus heralded the masses of anonymous souls who assumed the mantra of Myspace as their chance for cheap stardom.
