The internet has the answer
The internet has the answer.
When I was a kid, I thought light bulbs and television were pretty incredible. I’d sit around and think about how fundamentally they had changed how humanity lived. The light bulb meant we could work at night; we could have underground mines; we could read more. The television didn’t encourage us to read, but it communicated information nonetheless. It shaped cultural mores by the mere fact of exposing us to different points of view. We didn’t have to adopt those points of view, but just seeing that they were out there was game-changing.
In the last ten years, the internet has become a mind-blowing resource. When I want to see what’s on TV, I look online. When I want to see a TV show, I watch it online. When I want to listen to the radio, I often do so … online. Today a co-worker had a problem with Excel. Three of the more techy type people in the office crowded around her computer, confused as to why when you typed “HGE” in a cell, it changed to “HE”. I opened up a search engine on my computer. I typed in a rough version of a question into it. I read for a moment. I told my co-workers how to fix the problem. I was applauded as a genius. But no - the only genius involved is using the tool that’s right at our fingertips.
Last night I wanted to know how long it takes a swollen eye to go down. The internet told me, complete with helpful illustration and time-lapse videos. This morning I watched an awesome fanvid better than the show it was based off - online. The advent of the computer allowed me to write my fiction, but it was the internet that gave me a reason to publish it. It gave me an audience. I’ve dreamed of being a writer for two decades, but getting published was an insurmountable task. I’m not being paid for what I do, but people read my work and a dream is realized. Writing was never about the money, anyway.
A friend joked to me that if he had a kid, he’d homeschool with three core classes of Wikipedia, Google and Wolfram Alpha, with electives of YouTube and Reddit. My mother has a phone that translates Spanish. My cousin has one that you talk to use. One of my friends online has a car she talks to. My company is making motors that steer tractors (the ability to do this with cars can’t be far behind).
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like … I can understand that people (especially older ones) are alarmed at what the internet is doing to society. It’s changing the manner of discourse, entertainment, how we solve problems and how we learn. “Intellectual property” is the phrase being tossed around, but to me the larger picture is the framework that exists to convey this information. If they eliminated every fanwork on the planet and all the piracy, there’d still be a communication network and vast repositories of information. I think *that* is what the governments should really be afraid of, because *that* is where the power lies.
The internet has the answer.