When I was growing up, the Internet didn't exist. It really didn't start surfacing until I was a teenager, and even then it was still fairly primitive. I recall when a friend of mine had purchased a 24k modem and we thought it was blindingly fast...I don't want to know what it cost in 1995.
But here I am, getting ready to exit out of my 20s and I have to laugh, as I am posting in a blog that ten years ago wouldn't have existed. What slays me about the Internet is that the majority of our culture is now linked together in a vast web, almost forcing the world to take a stance of interconnectivity. And what do we use this new technology for? Jokes and pornography.
To really appreciate the power of the web, I start to think about the concept of an Internet Meme; information that spreads on a viral level. The concept of a meme is not new - there have been millions of pieces better written by far better educated people than me - but the basic idea of a unit of information spreading on a cultural level is powerful and fascinating. It's changed everything, from the way humor develops to story telling. Stories we used to tell around campfires when I was a Boy Scout (yeah, I was a Boy Scout...go figure) have found the way into 1's and 0's and taken on a mythos of it's own. Monsters exist...and they are only a Broadband connection away.
Kill some time on any Paranormal web board and you'll hear of The Slenderman. Youtube, in it's wisdom, has the whole Marble Hornets saga available for anyone looking for a good chill. I linked everyone in my last edition of "World Wide What?" to the very real darkness at the heart of modern Pripayat, Ukraine...if that isn't a sign of what anyone can see if they want, I don't know what is. When I was younger, a kid in the Midwest could never see images such as are available now. Is it any wonder that the generation that came after mine is as peculiar as they are?
We're growing as a people. It only makes sense that our hidden (and sometimes, not-so-hidden) fears might manifest in a place and way that allows us all to share.
Good post buddy i know is a little bit older but however here i am,and you have a lot of reason about it, i have see my little cousins grow up with the internet just as we know now and is extrange that now i feel just like my mom or my grandpas, saying "left that thing in peace and get out to play football or somthing" i sometimes see images of old nickelodeon programs saying "my childhood" i remember to see them but the biggest thing that i remember is, that i spent a lot of hours playing outside good post. Greatings from México
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