The Internet
Entry posted by Necro
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Huge credit to, as he's currently known, "Simulcast in Three Dee", for occasionally saying this entry's point and getting me thinking, and a certain recent 2-hour event that made me decide to post this.
Contrary to popular belief, it really is serious business. I mean, think about it. Your reading the thoughts of some kid in full colour, the image being transferred through multiple small cables and often merely through invisible beams in the air, through walls, windows, so many things, all powered by devices running off parts small enough to eat. You can live in America and become friends with someone in China on the other side of the world. Through webcams you can see, hear and talk to people who aren't even on earth(NASA has done stuff like that with the ISS). You can publish your story in the form of an epic and within days millions of people have read it. You can hold a conference between a man in Japan, Canada, England and Russia without anyone leaving home. You can post your musical talent like Mr. Tay Zonday and Funtwo have and become a celebrity with millions of people having heard your work in a matter of months. It can reignite someone's career from their work being a prank amongst friends and specific forums to being something that happens on live TV at the Macy's parade, and it can start someone's career like it did for the band who recorded the song for the "free hugs" video, the band in question now signed to Virgin Records. Through blogs, common people become first-response reporters, giving genuinely unbiased opinions of stuff literally as it happens because the internet has advanced to the point their phones and MP3 players can use it. It's amazing.
So why is this incredible tool often falling to spam, trolling, "NO U"-isms and other wastes of the internets sheer power?
Simply put, nobody truly understands the internet. As I once recall seeing it put, "The Internet is a gun nobody knows how to use". We all know it's incredible power. But at the same time we don't know how to utilize it, and everyone has different ideas. Some people think it's a perfect weapon, some think it's a tool of friendship, some think it's a series of tubes, some like me think it's got various purposes, probably the greatest being it's potential for fixing this messed-up world.
What do I mean? Let's go back to the American-Chinese friendship example I gave. Despite speaking different languages, living on opposite sides of the world from each other, having incredibly different views and more, two people can get along without ever meeting each other because of the internet. I'm just guessing based on the cold war, but odds are China is somewhat anti-capitalism, which includes being anti-America, and vice versa for America and Communism, but if two people from those two countries can see past the others nationality, possibly mainly because what they see is text and not skin, then there's a chance everyone can.
And not just with nationalities. Religious rifts could be healed by members of the warring religions who, without meeting and having the chance to build up prejudices, lead an example. Prejudices that certain groups are evil that have no backing could be wiped away by someone with these prejudices meeting someone over the internet, liking them and then learning their supposed to dislike them when they've come to see them as a likable person.
And not just with repairing things like that either. Google can give you what you want with a bit of typing and hitting the enter key. If you go into a third-world village and give everyone in the village solar-powered broadband internet-enabled laptops a la the OLPC program, what starts as one child googling "home" and figuring out how to build a home similar to a modern one could advance to the point that, in a few years, they could become a superpower. Look at Japan; they went from not being advanced enough to participate in WWI, to being a huge factor in WWII, and their one of today's leading countries in the fields of science and technology. And that was without the internet.
The internet has also made dreams possible. There are thousands of indie bands, underground comedians, who want to do that for their job, who would've gone unknown without the internet, but are getting signed on the first steps to a professional career because a corporate man saw and liked their video work. Going back to the example of the band who recorded the song for the "Free Hugs" video, namely Sick Puppies, I guarantee you an Australian alt. rock group like them would've gone unnoticed until breakup without it. Thanks to the internet though, they've been signed to Virgin Records.
Through the internet, soldiers in foreign nations can keep in touch with their families, keeping more families together and less spirits from breaking. People in rehab and hospitals can see their family from bed, when thirty or so years ago they would've been alone. Bringing people together.
From the "bringing people together" key, you and me. We don't live near each other, we've never met each other and odds are never will. But through the internet we've come to know each other enough that your willing to read my thoughts in this blog, whatever they may be. And look at BZP. Thousands of people have gathered to a single website, and for more than Bionicle; look at CoT. It's denser than pretty much every other forum. Even when we're not feeling like talking about Bionicle, BZP still has plenty for us to do.
And not to mention all the other incredible things the internet has managed to do. through machines controlled over the internet by soldiers, field troops can avoid danger, live longer and even fight better. The possibilities are amazing. The power is out there to do incredible things with the click of some keys and a mouse. We only need to stop following memes and spamming for fun long enough to see what we must to do move the world up through this device we know as "the internet". It's not just a luxury anymore. It's not just a part of life anymore. It's become a way of transcending barriers, saving lives, becoming a more efficient species, and so much more. You and I are part of a new generation, a generation given this incredible gift of the internet. I say we stop using it for childish memes, and start using it to fix the world's problems.
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