Sit Down...

I have something to tell you.

Culturally speaking, the internet has become a norm. It's not new-thing cool anymore. In a lot of ways, it's not even cool anymore. The show jumped the shark.

You knew this day was coming, of course. Your first inclination was the arrival of the Eternal September. Things have snowballed a million different ways since then. Now, access is nearly universal, and everyone has some easy avenue of digital self expression. It is no longer some advante garde form of expression to have a personal webpage or blog, and a bajillion (active!) social networking accounts; it's almost expected. Those places are also no longer the domain of a select group of people, they're open to everyone, including your mother, your boss, and your government. So, it's not like it's a great place to harbor subversive or experimental ideas. You can now put something online and there are stupid people who genuinely think it's real and expect you to believe it. The careful selection of 160 characters (1220 bits). all incapable of doing anything malicious on their own, are grounds for imprisonment. The previous disassociation with online and meatspace is closing.
 

All this self expression does not appear to be making us better. More ADD. Less focused. More shallow. More disconnected. More reactive.

There is a lot more to the world than the internet. A lot more than computers, and a lot more of computers.

Since everyone is doing it now. Including your grandmother, you should probably try to push somewhere else to see what happens.


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