“...the Internet, the major symbol and playing field of the new information technologies.” [1]
I realize that by now, my sixth blog entry, I’ve talked about the internet an awful lot. The fact that this blog, found obviously online, is worth half my mark for this class should indicate in part what a huge part of my daily life the world wide web really is. Hopefully I’ll manage to not be repetitive and bring a little something new to this posting.
When I actually think about it, it’s really scary how much the internet mediates my life. Whenever I get anywhere near a computer, I check if it has internet. If it doesn’t, I gripe about it – “what good is this stupid thing without the internet?!?!?!?”. If the computer does happen to have internet, I’m gone for who knows how long. Unavailable. At least until the connection becomes slow or I get disconnected. Then my nagging begins again. As much of a slave as this makes me sound like, don’t lie, you’ve been there too. You’re on the internet right now after all, aren’t you? Just before reading this, what did you do? Check out your email? Maybe do a little browsing? And what are you gonna do after this? Maybe check up on your RSS feed, make sure you haven’t missed a beat? Not to sound critical at all, because goodness knows that I’ve started and re-visited this blog several times in the process of writing it. Not because I’m a bad person, just because the internet’s there, at my disposal.
McLuhan likely couldn’t have thought of a better medium than the internet to complete his idea of the “global village”. The internet allows us to go from site to site, often from other countries, with the click of a mouse. At the same time as it gives us the opportunity to communicate with foreign cultures and ideas instantaneously, I feel like the pure knowledge of that has led us to be passive and isolate ourselves. The internet is an isolating medium at the same time as it is an enriching one. We can sit all alone at one end of the world wide web, see the whole world (thank you, Google Images ©), but never go out and SEE it. It’s almost as though McLuhan’s global village has backfired.
Even though sometimes I feel enriched after going on the internet, other times I feel ten times as dumb. I hate that. You never know what pop up is gonna pop up and force me to go to a stupid site that someone seems to think that I would enjoy. Sometimes I hate how utterly dependant I am on the internet, sometimes if I could, I would kiss the internet for all the useless (and, granted, maybe some useful) information it’s fed me over the years. The internet is the spouse I share with billions and billions of other people. We have a love/hate relationship, that’s all.
[1] Franklin, Ursula M.. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.
Brent, Doug. "McLuhan Web." Doug Brent's Rhetoric and Communications Studies Page. University of Calgary. 3 Oct 2008 <http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent/mcluhan/mcluhan.htm>
Playboy, "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Playboy Magazine March 1969. 28 Sep 2008 . <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html>.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
It's so awsome how you refered to the internet as your spouse, it's my spouse too! And I liked how you said what McLuhan might think of the internet. You have a lot of really good ideas. Good job! I'd write more, but not gonna lie, got lots of other stuff to do on the Internet.
Post a Comment