Would it be good for the world if the Internet suddenly went black and never returned? Why or why not? What would YOU lose? What would YOU gain? Refer to Klosterman's essay for support as necessary.
Please post your response by 4 p.m., Wed., Nov. 18.
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. -- James Madison
“When a dog bites a
man that is not news,
because it happens so often.
But if a man bites a
dog, that is news.”
- Editor John B. Bogart, New York Sun
man that is not news,
because it happens so often.
But if a man bites a
dog, that is news.”
- Editor John B. Bogart, New York Sun
About Me
Followers
forthcoming
- "A Newspaper Is a Collection" (poem)
- "News Today" (music video)
- 20th Century Man
- A Walk Back Through a Day's New
- BBC Facebook Parody
- Breaking News
- Bullshit
- Citizen Journalism -- What Is It?
- Civil Rights Movement
- Class Project: Media Parody
- CNN War (music video)
- Colbert versus Keen
- Dead!
- Dirty Laundry (Remix)
- Electronic Book Burning
- F the CC (music video)
- FCCFU
- Future of Book Publishing
- Internet Art!
- Interview With Andrew Keen
- Journalism Back in the Day (short movie)
- Journalism?
- Locus Novus
- Logorama (short film)
- Monoculture
- Murrow Broadcast From London
- Neil Postman on Cyberspace (YouTube)
- New York Times Home Page
- Newsboys
- Newsboys Shooting Craps
- Newsies
- NPR (Your Brain on Computers)
- Penn & Teller on Marketplace of Ideas
- Penn & Teller's FCC
- Perez Hilton
- Postman Comic: Orwell vs Huxley
- Reconstruction of American Journalism
- See It Now
- Story of Electronics
- Story of Stuff
- The Yellow Kid
- Turkel
- Video Game Faces
- Whackamurdoch
- Who Owns the Media?
- Who Owns the Web?
- World of Blogging (music video)
22 comments:
Most obviously, if the Internet went black and never returned, most jobs would be made a lot harder. Research would no longer be at our fingertips, and we'd actually have to go to the library. Files which are so neatly and conveniently kept would have to succumb to the awful past of file folders. We'd have to go to the store, and kiss checking up on on people via Facebook and Myspace goodbye- if you wanted to talk to a person or find something out about someone, you'd have to call, ask around, or resort to old-fashioned stalking.
Would this be a bad thing? My answer is an enthusiastic "yes." I don't want to dig around in library stacks for my information, I want to be able to look anything I want up in a snap, and sometimes the little voyeur in me wants to see what my high school classmates are up to. While I sometimes indulge in some mind candy via Facebook or perezhilton.com, I primarily use the Internet for research-writing projects and career opportunities, to be exact. The problem, which Klosterman points out, is when people spend so much of their time on the Internet that they can no longer decipher the real from the fabricated.
He credits the Internet with a loss of humanity, which I definately agree with. People replace actual relationships with Facebook and Myspace and turn to avatars in place of living their actual lives, which isn't exciting or entertaining enough.
Klosterman writes, "The benefits of technology are easy to point out (medicine, transportation, the ability to send and receive text messages during Michael Jackson's televised funeral), but they do not compensate for the overall loss of humanity that is its inevitable consequence. As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now" (p. 228).
Klosterman admits that technology is "the most important aspect of my life that I hate" (p. 213). While I too lament the strange Internet obsession many people harbor and the ridiculous garbage it often contains, I would not want to live without it. I don't want to be punished because people feel the need to live their lives glued to a computer screen, moving society towards a dumbed-down state. There will always be some of us who use it responsibly.
If the internet were to disappear and never return again my world would be completely turned on its head. I rely on the internet for entertainment, information and as a connection to those I don’t see on a daily basis. Writing papers and doing research would be much more time consuming because I would have to look for information through piles and piles of books rather than just surfing the web to find answers much quicker. I would also lose connection to many friends and relatives who I talk to via the internet because I don’t have time to talk to on the phone. I wouldn’t lose touch with my closest friends but the connection to those who I wouldn’t go out of the way to interact with disappears.
I would also gain many things in my new life without technology. I would gain library skills and the ability to do research with only books rather than the web. It is also possible that while I would lose connection with many friends, those that I do keep in touch with the bond might become stronger. I also agree with Klosterman when he stated that “TV takes away our freedom to have whatever thoughts we want,” because media outlets and the internet they provide so much intellectual stimulant that it becomes unnecessary for us to have our own thoughts. The media at times force feeds us their interpretation of the news, culture and the world around us to the point where we are unable to see the world through our own eyes. The Unabomber is a perfect example of our inability to share our thoughts with the world. The Unabomber was unable to get his ideas out into society without the use of violence, but shouldn’t the “free” citizen have the ability to share their thoughts without killing people?
That’s where the biggest contradiction lies though, because the internet is the best way for the silenced to be heard. You don’t need to be rich enough to own a publication and you don’t need approval of an editor to be published. All you need in a keyboard and an internet connection to get your voice out there. The problem with that is that there are so many voices it can be hard to push all the garbage out of the way to find real intellectual growth. The internet is a flawed system, but I still believe that the internet is the outlet to get your voice out. If people are able to become media literate and if they can learn how to plow through the bullshit, the web can be a very powerful tool that can have a positive impact in this world.
If the Internet no longer existed, the world would be a much better place. The only benefits we gain from the Internet are superficial- easier communication and quicker access to information. These "benefits" are not beneficial at all, but are actually, as Kaczynski writes, making us all slaves to the technology.
For example, in the "benefit" of easier research from the Internet, consider what happens when it is necessary to actually go and find information in a library (such as in the case of the end of the Internet...or if some tidbit has simply never been put there by someone). How will someone who grew up only doing research online navigate the shelves and shelves of thick reference books? How will they keep their attention on the stale old words without some multimedia component?
The answer is that they won't. Any information not on the internet will be lost within a few generations.
The second supposed benefit of the Internet is communication. Yes, Facebook and Myspace and everything are certainly entertaining. But consider that we are also now becoming in more and more frequent contact with our bosses and our professors. Communication on the Internet has led to the creation of the never-ending work day. My own computer has broken recently, so I must go to the library whenever I do work, but before it did I would sometimes write and edit into the wee hours of the morning. Now I am at a severe disadvantage in doing work, because almost all of it now is online (this blog, the wiki for this class, editing for The Little Rebellion). What happens when I go to get a job as a journalist? I'm going to need a computer to stay in touch with my boss, or else I'm probably not going to have that job very long.
Once again, this "benefit" is really just another way in which we have become slaves to technology.
Really, the question of the Internet is answered simply- it must be destroyed. The difficult question is: what else can we do instead of develop more and more technology?
Would the world be better if the internet went black? Probably, but it would also go back to being a lot more difficult. I don't mind researching in the library, in fact, sometimes it's kind of nice to have the material in your hands as opposed to on a screen, but who wants to do that ALL the time? I'm not sure I could even find the time to do all my research in the library, it's far more convenient to use the internet.
Klosterman makes a great point when he writes; "We would have less access to information, but we would not be any less informed about reality"(229). This is true, but it's also one of the reasons I wouldn't want the internet to go black. Most of what I use the internet for has nothing to do with academics, it has to do with entertainment. I don't use it to "be informed about reality," I use it to find new music or find out what's happening in the world of music and film or to quickly communicate with others.
I guess, after writing this, I've realized that I wouldn't be as distraught about the effect blacking out the internet would have on academics and education as much as I would be about its effect on my entertainment. Although I frequently read and entertain myself in other ways, sometimes I don't have time to sit downand read a book (or just don't feel like it). Sometimes, when I'm bored, I just want to "surf the web" and see where it leads me. On the other hand, I guess without all the distractions that the internet provides I'd have more time to do things like read.
i'm not exactly moved by this "research would be hard" argument. i wrote a 300-page dissertation without the internet. shelby foote wrote his monumental three-volume history of the civil war without it. so research would be slower, but also might be better -- that is, more comprehensive and in-depth. (also. i love the serendipitious discoveries i make walking the aisles of library shelves). . . it's internet surfing without the popups!)
Unfortunately I don’t know a world without the internet. I was raised with it and by it. For this reason, losing it suddenly would be like losing a hand. I don’t want to lose a hand. Nobody does. The interesting thing is that I would immediately get rid of the TV because I consider it useless. McLuhan believed that when a new medium becomes available, it takes all the previous mediums with it into a new dimension. When the internet came to be, it did this, except recently it has started to replace all the other mediums to the point that they have started to die. The TV did not make the Radio useless, and the Radio did not make the newspaper useless. Now, everywhere there is internet, the TV, Radio, and Newspaper are all useless. The old mediums only become useful in the absence of the new one.
This is different than any other technology that has changed our culture in the past. I think that we have entered the dimension that converges all the mediums into one Wild West like entity that our country, and therefore world, would collapse without.
Everyone in this blog so far has applied an internet blackout hypothetical to their own lives and experiences. This is an important thing to do because that’s what the professor asked us to do. Doing this, however, lets us ignore the bigger picture.
If the internet suddenly went black, never to return….it would be the end of the fucking world. Every economy would collapse. Everyone that used it would feel like they had their hands cut off. The state of things during the Great Depression would be what we are trying to return to. Fortunes would be lost, people would commit suicide.
When this happens, I’m not going to be concerned with how to do research or how to talk to my friends. I would probably die before I realized any benefit from it. I mean, I would learn how to cook a mean squirrel and make dandelion wine, if that counts.
Then, when we recovered and realized we had to read newspapers again, there would still be a whole generation of people who don’t know how to do anything without the internet. Handless people. People like me and you. This would be the Post Internet Dark Age. My prediction at this point is that some religion will take over for a couple thousand years.
You can’t go back in time, and you can’t go back a dimension. The internet is all we have. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I don’t think so.
George posits that without the Internet we would be like amputees, unable to reach out and manipulate reality. Klosterman seems to posit that with it we are amputees. If we can't imagine life without the Internet, doesn't that mean we have a very constricted (and deadening?) concept of life?
Just asking.
I completely agree with Klosterman! I love the internet, I couldn't imagine my life without it and I don't want it to go away, but I feel it has made us lazy. Even the educational purposes we use it for have made us lazy. It's gotten to the point that when I go to the library I don't even want to look for the books I needs myself, I make the librarian do it for me. I never us to be like that.
The more freedom I was given to use the internet, the more time I spent on it and the less I read. I love to read, but I don't because I have facebook and e-mail distracting me and for some reason I can't stay off of it for more than a few hours. I have often thought myself I would like to be cut off from the world and move to a cabin out in the woods, but I won't. Partly because I don't have the stomach to hunt an animal for food and partly because, like Klosterman, I like my air conditioner and heat.
It's disheartening that children aren't going to get the chance to be kids anymore. I'm scared future generations aren't going to know what's it like to pretend and play house because video games and the internet exists. It will force them to grow up much faster then need be, when I feel our generation has already had to do that.
Klosterman begins his piece on technology with the notion that "it's the most important aspect of my life that i hate," (213). I feel like many of us feel the same way. As much as we would like to steer away from it, we can't because it makes up a huge part of our lives. Klosterman points out towards the end of the passage that in order to "be accepted by society, I have to accept the rules and laws of the community living," (225). Especially in academia, the internet is a prevalent and reoccurring tool. Professors rely on it to communicate with students and convey information to them. One of my professors recently posted something on BlackBoard and expected us to print it out although he never notified us that it was posted. Mind you, he never posted anything on BlackBoard before. His expectations are one example how it is crucial to keep up with all forms of technology when they are presented to you.
It would be great if the internet went black for a day or two. As Klosterman describes, "we would have less access to information, but we would not be any less informed about reality," (229). He supports this with the notion that "we can't really differentiate between real and unreal images. we can describe the difference, but can't manage it," (219). I believe that the internet is often taken for granted. It becomes an all knowing force rather than a collection of average people's work. It offers a lot of information in one location that users don't realize can be obtained through other resources.
If the internet were to disappear, I would lose the ability to constantly keep in touch with friends at home and even on campus. Communicating with professors would be more difficult. It might be a good thing, however, because school would then become more confined to a set time block, rather than being this all encompassing force. There would be a lot less pressure to constantly be well informed and more time could be spent on learning through social interactions.
One thing I would miss, however, is the ability to keep in touch with potential employers. Sites that post jobs and encourage networking are very beneficial. They offer a great platform for prospective employees and aspiring journalists. Having the internet during this time, has been a great resource during this intimidating time. The information to succeed is always available to me to take advantage of.
I do not think the world would be better off if the Internet went black for good. I am looking at this from a personal perspective and I don't think I want to live in a world that doesn't have Internet. I don't say this only because I like the superficial things on the Internet like games and facebook, but I think a lot of it is educational as well. For example, our wiki project would not be possible without the Internet. I like knowing that a wealth of information is available at my fingertips. Whether I'm looking up an article for class, or trying to figure out the name of an actor I saw on TV, all of it is available in seconds. I think without the Internet I would be losing a lot of the things I love. I can listen to any song I want at any time thanks to YouTube, and not have to pay a dime. Being a broke college student, I appreciate the amount of free things that are available thanks to the Internet. Also, without the Internet I wouldn't know much about current events. I don't get the paper delivered to me every day, but I can read it online at any time during the day.
I do admit, however, that there would be some positives to losing the Internet. For example, when I'm writing a paper or studying I have to make a conscious effort to stay off of facebook or avoid checking my e-mail. These distractions are only a click away and I take full advantage of them and put off my work. However, being the procrastinator that I am, I'm sure that without the Internet I would find other ways to distract myself from my work. And sometimes those little breaks help me clear my head for a moment and then I can jump back into what I'm doing.
I think the evolution of technology is a good thing. Maybe in the "good old days" when there was no Internet things were different. This doesn't mean they were better, they were just different. I disagree with Klosterman when he says that we cannot evolve from 129,000 years in one century. Maybe we can't evolve physically, but every day we are learning something new and adjusting the way we think about things and perceive things. Maybe we haven't grasped technology fully but we can certainly learn how to use it to our advantage. I don't think Klosterman gives us enough credit.
I'm pretty sure that if the internet suddenly went black and never returned it would be the start of a more true and deeper meaning of life. Me personally, I wouldn't lose anything except for my networking site and a facebook. As far as information goes on the internet, that wouldn't be lost...go to a library. For organizations and business's since it would be such a huge affect on information being lost and such, they should have a back up means of saving their information and getting it to other sources and so on and so forth. But then again, I'm not sure there is a back up plan....
Communication would go back to being based on letters and telephones/cellphones. Oh my God....the cellphone, thank goodness that texting isn't connected to the internet (insert sarcastic :sigh: of relief here).
With no internet there is more hands on thinking and researching, by actually going to the source. There would be more stability in life being that the distractions wouldn't be the black hole of isolation on the computer, rather going to hang out with friends, or reading a book. If the internet becomes instinct it would just be another change, and not necessarily a step back, right? Well, it is a little disturbing, how Klosterman's essay breaks down the ideas behind the unabomber's motives, and it got me thinking.
I think that things may not change for better or worse at the same time, because the ideas of celebrity magazines are still too popular and the ideas of easy distractions can be made through other means of technology. Maybe I'm looking too much into it but there are so many outcomes that can come from losing the internet, would it be a loss or wouldn't it? I'm actually unsure. It's scary that maybe we've already been sucked into the black hole of meaningless entertainment and information. That we'll be able to figure other means of getting it out and attaining it.
Another way of looking at can be that the unabomber sent packages to helpless people and destroyed many lives, with the hopes of getting his point across. In comparison... the internet going black can destroy many organizations, businesses, and any underlying legitimate necessity an individual may have for it.
I think I have a headache...
If the internet were to go black and vanish, I feel there is more to lose at this point than to gain. I know in class and in these posts I've railed against the downfall of society due to increasingly omnipresent technology, but I actually feel that the loss of the internet would cause such a worldwide disaster that the global community would literal stop.
Think about the world we live in today. Half my assignments are to be completed online. Almost half the research for all my papers is expected to be done with electronic sources. I'm just a student at SUNY New Paltz. How many jobs rely on the internet to communicate, educate, publicize, etc? How many people use the internet to do day trading? You think the economy is suffering now, wait until internet companies crash on the stock market, and itunes cant sell music so apple crashes, and people cant have streaming stocks on their computer. The economy would be irreparably damaged.
The advantages of losing this heavily relied upon resource are clear. No time wasting, mind numbing distractions. No false information spread to the world at the click of a mouse. No proliferation of amateur work masquerading as professional. We've discussed it all in class before. I'd even go as far as to agree with Professor Good that research may even improve without the likes of Wikipedia. When writing my wiki for this very class, the fact that I can go to seven different websites and get 7 different answers, then check wikipedia and have all 7 of those facts on one page gives merit to the fact that everyone all over the internet is throwing up information that they believe is correct, and then everyone else is just plagerizing the amateur, believing what they read is fact. The loss of the internet would make people check more first-hand sources, do more leg work when writing a paper. Harder? Yes, but also more effective.
Despite these advantages, I still believe it would be a detriment to the global community and more importantly the global economy for the internet to become a metaphorical black hole of information. Think about what is already banking on the success of the internet and the consequences of it's failure. Technology may be the bane of our existence, but taking away what our culture completely relies on is just as dangerous. It's truly the lesser of two evils, and the safer choice would be to keep the internet around.
I agree, I have a headache.
Yes prof, it is a very deadening view of our life. The internet is causing us to be handicapped both with it, and without it. The interesting part to me is that it is such a young technology and even now we are dependent on it for almost everything. Right now, there is an network in Europe with 1000 times the speed as what we are used to.
I'm tellin you, they are gonna hook our brains up to the internet, man. Then what?
We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.
When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please:
Describe what you were doing when you got this error.
Provide the following error code and additional information.
bX-qs6igr
Additional information
blogID: 3851992643153170900
host: www.blogger.com
postID: 6393004480325222989
uri: /comment.do
This information will help us to track down your specific problem and fix it! We apologize for the inconvenience.
I just wrote a pretty decent length response to this discussing how choosing to keep the internet around is the lesser of two evils. Then, at 3:53 I recieved this error message and my post was deleted. I retract everything I was attemtping to say. Damn it all, I hope the internet fails for good.
Would it be good for the world if the Internet suddenly went black and never returned?
Probably. I think it would turn the world upside down for a little while, but people would get used to it. For generations they lived without cell phones attached to their ears and the Internet at the tips of their fingers, I think we could go back to those days if it was necessary. Honestly, I think it is. I sent a link to Prof. Good about two girls getting stuck in a well and updating their Facebook status' instead of calling for help. That should tip us off that something is wrong with our society. There are a lot of benefits, yes, but I think the negatives outweigh the positives on a much larger scale and it's going to do us in in the long run.
I know I myself spend way too much time on Facebook and YouTube and all that other crap on the Internet. And I feel like if that were to go away, it would give me so much of my life back. I know, I can't blame the Internet, it's my own fault for doing it, but as Klosterman says "...because I am not free-because I am a slave to my own weakness-I can no longer imagine life without it. I love the internet."
Also, to add to the argument about researching on the Internet as opposed to in the library, I prefer researching in the library. I actually think it's easier. In the library, you find a book about one topic, and you know exactly what you're looking for in that book. On the internet, there's so many places to go for information it's ridiculous. Also, a book is reliable, the internet isn't always. I would always choose to use a book's information before I would choose to use the internet's.
Like Klosterman said, “It’s the most important aspect of my life that I hate.” I feel the same way, you cannot live with it, and yet now you cannot live without it. Therefore, it is hard to say whether or not it would be good if the Internet was gone for good. I think that we’d either revert back to a simpler way of life when people could hold conversations face to face, without mentioning Facebook, Twitter or what they saw on YouTube, or, we have been so dependent on the Internet that we would not know how to survive without it and our society would be something out of a post-apocalyptal movie.
Unlike many of the people in my generation, I was not raised by the computer or the Internet. My family did not own a computer until I was in 8th grade and did not have Internet until I was in high school. Although it was difficult for me to accept at first, I think it benefited me in the long run. Unfortunately, I too have fallen into almost solely researching on the Internet, because it is easy. I think that if the Internet were to be gone for good, we would not take the easy route anymore because we could not.
It may benefit our society and the future if we were not so reliant on the Internet and web-based technologies, which in fact are not that reliable. If children were raised on actual books and not computers, if people walked into the library to do research instead of just typing it into a search engine and if we learned how to use maps instead of GPS systems or Google Maps, we in fact would be a more educated society. Personally, I believe that it is the quality of the information you receive and understand rather than the quantity. Just because the Internet enables us to know a little about a lot does not mean it’s good.
Had the Internet completely collapsed tomorrow, I honestly like the only thing I would lose we be the many ways I've taught to distract myself. Honestly, besides school assignments, the only other thing I get out of the Internet is entertainment. I believe that I would gain the ability to read again, do photography, write stories, rather than sit down and watch who updated their status on Facebook every five seconds. As for the rest of the world, I personally believe that some people would have completely meltdowns. The pace at which the Internet has trained us to follow will make the "old-fashioned" technologies seem ridiculous if, as a world, we had to return to them. Personally, I would find it quite entertaining if the Internet cut out and never returned. To think Perez Hilton couldn't be famous anymore... what kind of world would we live in?
Here's the real first sentence... Sorry about that:
Had the Internet completely collapsed tomorrow, I honestly think the only thing I would lose would be the many ways I've taught to distract myself.
If the internet went black and never returned it would be extremely hard to adjust to. Reason being is that society has grown so accustomed to having the internet and building businesses, academia, video games, social networking, lives etc. that if the internet did go black everyone would feel "out of the loop."
It is hard to imagine a world without internet, but that doesn't mean that we would not survive. In "Fail" it says "we would have less access to information, but we would no be any less informed about reality." (pg 229) This reminds us that we would actually have to go out and seek the information ourselves and in reality this would help us become more informed. The internet is so convenient to just copy and paste certain things without reading the body of the text. The uncertainty that lies there when you have a white sheet of paper and pen enforces cognitive reasoning rather than the internet where the truth lies beneath millions and millions of electronic pages.
It states "I am a slave to my own weakness-I can no longer imagine life without it. I love the Internet." (pg.229) Personally, I would lose a lot, but gain so much more in the same breathe. I would lose the social network I have with friends from the past, that if it wasn't for sites like facebook I would have no contact with them. In reality not having contact with them would not make me a more knowledgeable individual, but rather engage in conversations for social/personal pleasure.If you think about it social networks are instilling self indulgence in the minds of our generation and the next to come.
I would have to go out of my way to seek information and conduct research on topics of interest.
Professionally, I would be at a loss, because I would have to invest more time and money into making my business work. If the Internet never happened or never boomed the way it did then I would be able to survive. I am not saying that it is impossible, but just knowing that the Internet existed at one point would be frustrating. I would have to revamp my whole professional life and come up with a system.
The Internet is a gift and a curse, but some of us do not know how to distinguish the two and which of the two does the Internet play in our life. In turn, I do agree with the statement that "all technology has a positive short-term effect and a negative long-term impact."
It would be great for the world if the Internet disappeared. It's sucking us dry as it is now. I don't know if we were meant to have all of this information at our fingertips. If you wanted to know something, you used to have to actually go an look it up in library. Now you can throw a quick search into Wikipedia. doesn't matter if it's right or not. The Internet is a luxury that I think we all take for granted. People existed before it. People used to write letters and make phone calls and go out of their way to see people they loved. Bands needed to be good (or at least rich) to tour and get signed and get hyped. Writers used to write to see their words on bound and stapled paper. People used to make things they could hold. Things in general used to have more meaning.
That being said I would lose a lot. I couldn't have a free record label. My band would be considerably less known. I would have less opportunities to write. I would have to get things published in (gasp!) actual physical literary magazines etc. I couldn't keep in contact with an many people.
Klosterman says that the Internet is "the most important part of [his] life that [he] hate[s]." Nicole said that she thinks that many of us feel this way. I don't think so. I don't think anybody of our generation really hates the Internet. We have always had it. Klosterman can hate it. Howie can hate it. What are we complaining about? How much easier our lives are because of it? Only people who have existed in a world without can truly see and inform us about what a destructive force it can be. But I don't think that we will ever do anything about it. It's not in our nature. This is how we adapted. This is how we evolved.
I would love to see the Internet disappear. Maybe then survival of the fittest would catch up with all the dumb fucks that I ONLY KNOW ABOUT BECAUSE OF CYBERSPACE. Maybe removal of the internet could be like ultimate population control.
Maybe without the Internet we could exist in a world where it's okay for everyone not to have all the answers all the time, where you have to really be passionate about something to want to know everything about it rather than just "stumbling upon" it, where four people can sit at a restaurant and share a meal without sitting in silence because they are all on their smart phones.
I'll never see the day. But I wish I had and I hope I will.
And I guess it sounds stupid since essentially I am romanticizing something I don't really know anything about. But I don't know would Henry Rollin's Black Flag tour journal that lived with him in a van all over the country through good times and bad be the same if it was just the shit he vomited onto a crisp, clean, oblivious blog. I don't think so.
I don't think we value things the same way people used to. I think we need to. If we don't, everything will eventually mean nothing.
I don’t think it would be necessarily a bad thing if the Internet suddenly went black and never returned. However, what would happen to the people who live their lives by it? As for me, I don’t think I would be losing much of anything. I started using the Internet when I was about 20 years-old. I felt like an outsider who had to play catch up with the rest of my peers. I was so use to writing papers and looking through books to do my research. I then had to learn how to use the Internet and how to research online. During the process I repeatedly asked myself, “what was wrong with the old way?” In class some spoke of a sense of freedom it gave them. I’m going to have to disagree because I think the last thing we are, is free to the Internet. How free can a person be if they can not even go a day without going on the Internet? Society has put so much importance on the Internet, that those who are not that interested still use it in their daily lives. It has become a way to network, find jobs, socialize and those are just to name a few. Since so many people use the Internet others are forced into it because there is no choice. If I fail to use the Internet, then I’m isolating myself from those who do use it. Then where does that leave me? I feel that I have no choice. Those in an authoritative position decide the usage of the Internet. If it was not for that, I probably would not go on as much as I do.
Klosterman made a very good point, “The degree to which anyone values the Internet is proportional to how valuable the Internet makes that person.”(pg. 224) It is sad that people use this device to give themselves a sense of importance. However, this technology has become so significant in the past decade that I only see this problem increasing. People need to be more aware of the time they spend on the computer, cell phone, and television. It is o.k. to use these devices but it is also important to know when to turn them off.
Post a Comment