Homework for Art Studies 174
When I was younger, my siblings and I liked to pretend that I was the teacher and they my students. We would rearrange our tiny desks in the bedroom, and put up a sheet of manila paper to become our blackboard. We also liked to play with our Lego blocks. We had a gigantic box full of it - my pink Lego mixed with my brother’s pirate and space Lego and my sister’s jumbo Lego.
Later on, we got our own video game console - the Sega Genesis, with which I discovered the joys of playing “Sonic the Hedgehog”. Then our PlayStation came, where my brother and I would button-mash in “Tekken”, and I would try to get all the levels in “Crash Bandicoot” unlocked. Years later, the three of us pitched in to buy our PlayStation2. With its more refined graphics, our gaming experience was brought to a whole new level. I would play “Final Fantasy X” for hours on end, making sure that Tidus, Yuna, and the rest of the gang succeeded.
Today I always find myself logging on to my Yahoo! Messenger (YM) to chat with friends, checking my e-mail, going to YouTube to entertain myself, downloading from mininova.org the latest episode of Gossip Girl, and trying out all the games available on Yahoo! Games - Text Twist, anyone?
But why am I writing this? Well, it’s because I’ve come to realize how different life is now from what life used to be. When I was younger, I was already content on playing hide-and-seek and jackstones, and competing against my siblings on who builds the best fortress out of Lego. Nowadays, I catch myself finding happiness in YM conferences with my friends even though we’re all sitting beside each other, in watching hilarious Korean variety shows with subtitles on YouTube, and flooding my friends’ Multiply albums with comments.
Recently, I joined Facebook. I have always been kind of proud of myself for not getting a Friendster account ever. But I eventually succumbed to this latest fad in social networking because of my friends. Peer pressure? Yes.
But I remember that a couple of days after creating my Facebook account, I became conscious of just how great the Internet is. I practically cried when I found my foreigner friends - my Dutch roommate and Japanese friend from a sort of summer camp some eight years ago. Instantly, I became connected with them again after having stopped exchanging e-mails some time ago. Now I have an invitation to visit Masako in New York, where she is living now, and to meet up with Myrthe somewhere halfway between Manila and the Netherlands. Of course, they are all still a dream. But who knows, I just might be able to see them again.
So the greatest boon of having the Internet for me is staying in touch with friends and relatives here and abroad. I get to see how their lives are doing, and talk to them through texts and symbols like “LOLs” and “Js”. Of course I cannot discount the other advantages like quickly getting research materials, and downloading free videos and music.
I admit this may be a rather shallow answer to the question of how revolutionary the Internet is. But this I think goes to show how far the Internet has gone and how great a change has occurred from my playing school with my siblings everyday to getting connected and exploring cyberspace 24/7.
Later on, we got our own video game console - the Sega Genesis, with which I discovered the joys of playing “Sonic the Hedgehog”. Then our PlayStation came, where my brother and I would button-mash in “Tekken”, and I would try to get all the levels in “Crash Bandicoot” unlocked. Years later, the three of us pitched in to buy our PlayStation2. With its more refined graphics, our gaming experience was brought to a whole new level. I would play “Final Fantasy X” for hours on end, making sure that Tidus, Yuna, and the rest of the gang succeeded.
Today I always find myself logging on to my Yahoo! Messenger (YM) to chat with friends, checking my e-mail, going to YouTube to entertain myself, downloading from mininova.org the latest episode of Gossip Girl, and trying out all the games available on Yahoo! Games - Text Twist, anyone?
But why am I writing this? Well, it’s because I’ve come to realize how different life is now from what life used to be. When I was younger, I was already content on playing hide-and-seek and jackstones, and competing against my siblings on who builds the best fortress out of Lego. Nowadays, I catch myself finding happiness in YM conferences with my friends even though we’re all sitting beside each other, in watching hilarious Korean variety shows with subtitles on YouTube, and flooding my friends’ Multiply albums with comments.
Recently, I joined Facebook. I have always been kind of proud of myself for not getting a Friendster account ever. But I eventually succumbed to this latest fad in social networking because of my friends. Peer pressure? Yes.
But I remember that a couple of days after creating my Facebook account, I became conscious of just how great the Internet is. I practically cried when I found my foreigner friends - my Dutch roommate and Japanese friend from a sort of summer camp some eight years ago. Instantly, I became connected with them again after having stopped exchanging e-mails some time ago. Now I have an invitation to visit Masako in New York, where she is living now, and to meet up with Myrthe somewhere halfway between Manila and the Netherlands. Of course, they are all still a dream. But who knows, I just might be able to see them again.
So the greatest boon of having the Internet for me is staying in touch with friends and relatives here and abroad. I get to see how their lives are doing, and talk to them through texts and symbols like “LOLs” and “Js”. Of course I cannot discount the other advantages like quickly getting research materials, and downloading free videos and music.
I admit this may be a rather shallow answer to the question of how revolutionary the Internet is. But this I think goes to show how far the Internet has gone and how great a change has occurred from my playing school with my siblings everyday to getting connected and exploring cyberspace 24/7.