10 Reasons to Keep the Internet
The internet, as an invention, has proven problematic in several ways. I'm Mormon, not Amish, so I love the thing, if I also acknowledge its drawbacks, including pornography (could just stop there - it's a blog post of a different tone), the social media timesuck, and - frankly - useless blogs like this one. Also, trolling.
So to be positive about the hyper-digital turn late-modern life has taken, I'm writing a list of the ten-ish things I think justify the continued existence of this mixed blessing. In no particular order.
1) HYPERLINKS. Okay, I blog too much, but I'm also an amateur fiction writer, and let me tell you how tempting it is to include hyperlinks instead of allusions. Allusions as a literary device have been around for centuries, and they're used (via Marx) as a form of obfuscation - a cultural marker of certain classes and the bearers of certain types of Bourdieuvian capital. If you understand the classical story Shakespeare refers to, for instance, you get the in-joke of people who have been taught how to read via Ovid/Homer/Virgil, unlike those of us who grew up on Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Joss Whedon. If, however, you include hyperlinks, your audience has immediate access to your clever in-joke, and while this may lose you cultural capital, it appeals to my essentially egalitarian nature.
2) SUPERCUTS. I have always wanted to make a single video of my favorite movie explosions. I think they're very pretty. People DO that now - and they're called "supercuts:"every instance (or as many as the creators could find) of a certain movie trope all cut together into a single video. For instance:
Then they publish them on youtube, and everybody can share!
I kind of wish somebody would edit together the best period-drama adaptation kissing scenes, but people who make supercuts don't watch period dramas. Apparently.
3) TVTROPES. There are vast repositories of general human information available, not the least famous of which is wikipedia.org, and the fact that the internet makes these forms of cataloguing possible is nothing short of a 21st century miracle. My favorite such repository of unrealized human information is tvtropes.org, on which site we record, allude, and mock common narrative patterns in a remarkably structuralist project that proves humanity's collective genius.
4) GIF PARTIES. So, once upon a time there were these things called "digital photographs" and someone figured out that you can use them to make short, hypnotic animations of your favorite television or movie moments, and taken out of context in the pure spirit of late-modernism, they're fun on a digital popsickle stick. If you get a whole bunch of them together, it's called a gif party, and they make me giggle. Especially ones with Jensen Ackles.
5) DIGITAL SCRIPTURES. Mormons have slightly more scripture than most other religions, so when you add study manuals for Sunday School and auxiliary meetings, Sundays are like a schoolday with the Math and the Social Studies and the three paperback novels in a backpack. . . So along come ebooks, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints says "whee!" and now we're all singing into our smartphones. It totally works, unless the music coordinator/chorister chose a song still under strict copyright, and then you have to actually crack a hymnal.
Ebooks generally, though. . . totally worth it.
6) NETFLIX. I'm tempted to be on the fence about this one because of timesuck, but streaming video puts commercial television in its place (somebody else's home), and keeps my entertainment costs to a relative minimum. Admittedly, I still subscribe to the disc-service (two at a time) and when that disappears, I will cry. There will be crying, with the red eyes and the headaches. . .
I include smart TVs and Roku devices here - all part of the same plan to save the world from bad advertising.
7) INSTAGRAM. I'm an instagram n00b. It was originally intended as a mobile thing only, and I still have a stupid phone. But the idea of instantly sharing photographs, if oddly or unethically used, is still a profoundly world-changing idea. I can see my new niece giggling, even if she's always sleepy or grumpy when I'm actually holding her. I don't have to beg to watch my friend's travel slideshow when she returns, because I can follow her as she travels.
8) PANDORA RADIO. The Music Genome Project was intended to map the cultural genetics of certain sounds and types of music in what is - again - a profoundly structuralist project. They used it to help you listen to music you actually LIKE (with or without commercials, depending on your subscription level) instead of being at the mercy of pop radio, or increasingly nonspecific "oldies" stations. Bless you. It's available on any wifi-capable device.
9) FAMILY HISTORY. Mormons believe that we're all God's children. We're also each-others' children here on earth, so we have this huge, four-dimensional, earth-wide project to connect EVERYBODY who wants to together in one, big family starting with our own ancestors. It's possible to do analogue, though I imagine it would need a rather large cork-board (it's totally inefficient, and largely redundant). So we do it digitally, on the internet. Participation is purely voluntary for the living and the dead, but the project is epically cool and according to our theology, one of the main reasons we exist. Plus I learn things about myself, like that I'm related to both Charlemagne and Robert the Bruce.
10) MXBF. Giant retailers like amazon.com offer really competitive prices for used and new books. They warehouse items and ship them everywhere, but as a book collector and reader (ebooks are dandy, but not a substitute for hardcopy) it can be difficult to find some of the rarer editions there, or for the right price. The invention of the internet also allowed the creation of giant search engines like Google (my general favorite), and more specialized search engines. This one digs through all major online booksellers to find the best condition and price. I use The Bookfinder.
Add your own Internet Justifications in the comments. I want to hear! Be specific, and elaborate on your reasoning.
So to be positive about the hyper-digital turn late-modern life has taken, I'm writing a list of the ten-ish things I think justify the continued existence of this mixed blessing. In no particular order.
1) HYPERLINKS. Okay, I blog too much, but I'm also an amateur fiction writer, and let me tell you how tempting it is to include hyperlinks instead of allusions. Allusions as a literary device have been around for centuries, and they're used (via Marx) as a form of obfuscation - a cultural marker of certain classes and the bearers of certain types of Bourdieuvian capital. If you understand the classical story Shakespeare refers to, for instance, you get the in-joke of people who have been taught how to read via Ovid/Homer/Virgil, unlike those of us who grew up on Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Joss Whedon. If, however, you include hyperlinks, your audience has immediate access to your clever in-joke, and while this may lose you cultural capital, it appeals to my essentially egalitarian nature.
2) SUPERCUTS. I have always wanted to make a single video of my favorite movie explosions. I think they're very pretty. People DO that now - and they're called "supercuts:"every instance (or as many as the creators could find) of a certain movie trope all cut together into a single video. For instance:
I kind of wish somebody would edit together the best period-drama adaptation kissing scenes, but people who make supercuts don't watch period dramas. Apparently.
3) TVTROPES. There are vast repositories of general human information available, not the least famous of which is wikipedia.org, and the fact that the internet makes these forms of cataloguing possible is nothing short of a 21st century miracle. My favorite such repository of unrealized human information is tvtropes.org, on which site we record, allude, and mock common narrative patterns in a remarkably structuralist project that proves humanity's collective genius.
4) GIF PARTIES. So, once upon a time there were these things called "digital photographs" and someone figured out that you can use them to make short, hypnotic animations of your favorite television or movie moments, and taken out of context in the pure spirit of late-modernism, they're fun on a digital popsickle stick. If you get a whole bunch of them together, it's called a gif party, and they make me giggle. Especially ones with Jensen Ackles.
5) DIGITAL SCRIPTURES. Mormons have slightly more scripture than most other religions, so when you add study manuals for Sunday School and auxiliary meetings, Sundays are like a schoolday with the Math and the Social Studies and the three paperback novels in a backpack. . . So along come ebooks, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints says "whee!" and now we're all singing into our smartphones. It totally works, unless the music coordinator/chorister chose a song still under strict copyright, and then you have to actually crack a hymnal.
Ebooks generally, though. . . totally worth it.
6) NETFLIX. I'm tempted to be on the fence about this one because of timesuck, but streaming video puts commercial television in its place (somebody else's home), and keeps my entertainment costs to a relative minimum. Admittedly, I still subscribe to the disc-service (two at a time) and when that disappears, I will cry. There will be crying, with the red eyes and the headaches. . .
I include smart TVs and Roku devices here - all part of the same plan to save the world from bad advertising.
7) INSTAGRAM. I'm an instagram n00b. It was originally intended as a mobile thing only, and I still have a stupid phone. But the idea of instantly sharing photographs, if oddly or unethically used, is still a profoundly world-changing idea. I can see my new niece giggling, even if she's always sleepy or grumpy when I'm actually holding her. I don't have to beg to watch my friend's travel slideshow when she returns, because I can follow her as she travels.
8) PANDORA RADIO. The Music Genome Project was intended to map the cultural genetics of certain sounds and types of music in what is - again - a profoundly structuralist project. They used it to help you listen to music you actually LIKE (with or without commercials, depending on your subscription level) instead of being at the mercy of pop radio, or increasingly nonspecific "oldies" stations. Bless you. It's available on any wifi-capable device.
9) FAMILY HISTORY. Mormons believe that we're all God's children. We're also each-others' children here on earth, so we have this huge, four-dimensional, earth-wide project to connect EVERYBODY who wants to together in one, big family starting with our own ancestors. It's possible to do analogue, though I imagine it would need a rather large cork-board (it's totally inefficient, and largely redundant). So we do it digitally, on the internet. Participation is purely voluntary for the living and the dead, but the project is epically cool and according to our theology, one of the main reasons we exist. Plus I learn things about myself, like that I'm related to both Charlemagne and Robert the Bruce.
10) MXBF. Giant retailers like amazon.com offer really competitive prices for used and new books. They warehouse items and ship them everywhere, but as a book collector and reader (ebooks are dandy, but not a substitute for hardcopy) it can be difficult to find some of the rarer editions there, or for the right price. The invention of the internet also allowed the creation of giant search engines like Google (my general favorite), and more specialized search engines. This one digs through all major online booksellers to find the best condition and price. I use The Bookfinder.
Add your own Internet Justifications in the comments. I want to hear! Be specific, and elaborate on your reasoning.
For me, it's also communication with others that I really do love and wish to maintain relationships with, but due to darling children and life in general, I can't. There are lots of amazing people I would have lost if it weren't for email and social media. That being said, social media is no replacement for actual time together, but it helps make the time together more plausible and usually more frequent than it would be otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to include Facebook, but it's just as often a reason to get rid of the internet as keep it, but you're absolutely right: keeping in touch with people is probably the BEST reason, overall.
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