Damn, internet you are good.
I was born in 1980. Not too long ago, but long enough ago that we all thought dayglo shorts and shirts that changed color around your armpits were the wave of the future. Turns out we were very wrong.
I think back to my grandparents who heard about life on the other side of the globe through a radio. There view of the world was still in their own head. Words like exotic, mystery, magical were how they pictured Cambodia, India, The Far East.
My parents' generation had television. Pictures of the world broad casted in almost real time. They used words like expansive, panoramic, horrific, war torn to describe Everest, Outer Space, and Vietnam.
My generation has the internet. Instantaneous information about anything you wish to learn about, at your fingertips. Soldiers can Twitter and up date their Facebook from the front lines. To describe Detriot, Outer Mongolia, Space we use words like LOL, UR FAGZZZ!!!, and I can has Sri Lanka?
We have created the foreign, seen the strange, and now are desensitized to it's mystery.
The internet has given us access to the entire world, and we rickrolled it.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the internet can be a place of positivity.
A couple of days ago I posted a piece about a local radio personality that came down with brain cancer. I was pretty bummed out and sent some well wishes their way.
The in turn responded by reading the piece and took time out of their understandably busy schedule and thanked me personally. They didn't have to do that but it's amazing that a few hundred poorly edited words on some bargain basement blog like this could help in some tiny insignificant way.
As the internet increasingly makes us an insular country. A mass of young people shutting out the world to proclaim EPIC FAILS on others anonymously, it is humbling to me to be able to spend just a moment near a stream of intimacy and closeness that happens too too little.
I don't mean to brag or seem as though as I have some lightning touch of speech craft. And I hope I don't come off as name dropping or arrogant.
If anything Bryan Bishop and Christie Clough have humbled me beyond words.
1 comment:
That's so nice of them to thank you! The Internet can really connect people. It's a great thing. :)
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