I have been thinking and this has been grinding inside my head for some time... The internet is an amazing thing, it is everything and nothing. It is like a new planet, where part of you and me lives, learns and travels among the huge amount of data that is put there by other people, it is an economy of data and time and it makes me feel like there is another planet that superimposed on top of planet earth. In this planet there are very few nations and it is relatively easy to travel from nation to nation. When i say nation i say mindset, preferences and usage. There are people that use it only for email, others for piracy, others are media addicts and watch lots of media on media sites, there are the anon, the betans, etc... The internet is extremely important, currently few countries can survive without the internet, it allows for online shops, online banking, stock exchange, telecommunication, etc... The idea of an internet kill switch is something that feels like it would cause more social damage than an atomic bomb while keeping infrastructural damage to a minimum. I sometimes ask myself: "How was life before the internet and telecommunications?" I grew up without internet and telecom but these days it still confuses me on how was i able to go around without a mobile phone and how i obtained data for my school work without the internet. Please discuss...
Apart from not knowing how EVER to compare prices before buying....I could *do without all this mobile and internet. The really amazing thing is how used we've gotten to it in such a short time. *yes I could. I could be talking to real friends instead of you lot. I could phone when i'm there, not on the way I could use a map...made of dead trees I could do with watching the news once every other day
I used to plagiarise from library books. The internet has made it far easier - ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v. I used to walk to a phone box. Now I get annoyed by dings, woops, funny animal noises and ring-ding-a-dings. I used to walk or take the bus into town to buy things. Now they get delivered to me at my convenience after I've read the umpteenth review, scrutinised pictures, compared the price and looked for money back and/or vouchers.
I was thinking of this the other day. I like the comparison that the internet is another world. I still get by without GPS for the most part but I do look at maps online when I'm going somewhere. The fact that they're on the computer is just convenient. Getting stuck somewhere before cell phones were widely used was a scary though. Imagine a long bike ride, sliding out, breaking an ankle or something and no way to just phone for help.. Even car issues where you've just broken down and there's no injury were a huge pain in the ass. Worst of all, you had to deal with the person at the video store judging you with their eyes when you rented your nudie movies.
I love, and at the same time, loathe the internet. It's made my life retardedly easy, and has done more for me than I would have expected it to, but at the same time, it's ruined my life. I can't socialise with people properly, without a keyboard and mouse, I can't stop referring to things that happened on the internet, and I cannot seem to go a day without it.
Try taking a step outside once in awhile, jeez. No, seriously, it's a fun eye opening thing to do one day. Leave the internet completely out of your life for a day, or even longer. You can adapt it to be completely tech free by leaving out cell phones, debit cards, whatever level of primitiveness you want. Being born in '91 it's a strange sort of thought being without the internet. My parents had a PC and dial-up connection by the time I was old enough to understand what such things were, by late elementary school I was already using the internet for research. In middle school I got my own PC and broadband connection, from then on it's been completely entwined with my life. Another fun one that really got my dad and I in wonder: plastic drinking straws. One day the thought came up that plastic was a relatively recent invention, what did people use for straws before then? I asked him and he sat there for a few minutes just thinking and finally said, "You know, we just drank from the glass". Obviously straws have existed before plastic but they weren't quite as commonplace.
Sloth, i do that a lot. I live in an island that is beautiful and full of stuff to discover. I feel like i have replaced TV, magazines, radio, book reading, cinema, etc... with internet based stuff. The internet has become my "Library of Alexandria", i can find about anything at any time without having to travel abroad to find the correct book. Before i had internet i was always reading books from my local libraries, now i have a library at home that is updated regularly and has animated books (videos on media sites). It has also boosted my ability to learn, i can obtain and read books that would cost me hundreds of euros to purchase + the price of the air travel to the UK (several hundred euros) or some place that has that book. If one day the internet is cut of in my island (it is relatively easy to do, all the fibre optic cables connect to one place that is not guarded) the economic and social effects would be huge and there would be an entire social collapse.
I remember when I was a kid and CB radio was a big craze for a while but at least we were talking, thinking about it alot of people on the internet are kinda 'retarded'. "omg u noob" etc, etc.
That's it, you're marked as a potential terrorist now. You have the plan worked out, scouted the location...good luck with your next planeride!
