I'm sitting in class- intro to journalism. This course dedicates itself to forms of mass media. Television, radio, video games, music, radio. Today we're talking about the Internet.
[From class]
In the U.S:
-current pop: 337 million
-Internet users: 248 million (73%)
-U.S. represents 17% of Internet users worldwide
Earlier this session he recalled how difficult it was to go to a library every time he would have liked to learn about something.
This thought sparked my retrospective engine. I was raised in the information aged. My family was online with the Internet and email in 1995. It probably helps too that my dad has been a computer technician for the past 25 years. As I continue to think-
-he continues to speak,
"In 1995 I got my first email account. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. [...] I had a friend in the army I knew in Singapore I'd email to. Of course at that time it would take a couple of days to send an email. That's how long it would physically take for the message to be transmitted electronically to the other side of the world."
His experience allows me to draw a comparison to some of my own.
[Tangent] In '96, my friend Brennan and I downloaded America Online Messenger and found a random SN in an obscure chat room that is by now far from obsolete and deleted.
Playindirt[something-or-other] was her screen name. She was a mother or a wife. She had a career- I don't know where she was from. She seemed genuine. We didn't know why she was on such a modern device like this- for her age? Maybe she was just up-to-date, or she was or had intentions to cheat on her husband. Maybe she wasn't even married and was without child-desperately lonely.
And even now I speculate...perhaps she was the lonely woman Brennan and I ran into at the top of Buena Vista Park in San Francisco. She has the well-meaning smile I imagined her to have- same up-beat voice that hides her depression, and the laugh that feigns her enthusiasm. Oh yeah, the same teeth that grind frustrations from dinner time-until midnight well into thick REM sleep. Yeah, its definitely her smile. What its like to be lonely in a city like that- I can't imagine. What's she been doing since 1996? Staying connected I hope-
-I had always imagined her living in San Francisco-some place up north...
[End]
Two days for an email to Singapore...
Two summers ago I had met my friend Jenny on a music Internet service called last.fm. It's one of those sites that look and act a lot like the other sites you are personally more familiar with: Myspace, Facebook etc...
We formed a nice friendship and after a few polite messages we began talking on MSN messenger-another messaging service. Exciting summer nights- they would end with me returning home still looking forward to the later hours of solitude where I would unwind, slap a sandwich together-pour a tall glass of water, switch the fan on full blast and talk to my pen pal, 5503.485 away (courtesy of Google Maps Distance Calculator via the Internet).
It wasn't until the spring of 2008 that while planning an excursion through Iceland on a whim-for-a-woman back home that thought I may visit a friend while staying in the Nordic countries. I ended up spending close to a month there in Tampere, Finland and was an active member in their social group.
The stark contrast of culture I experienced there was fascinating- although it was an entirely different place in many facets than one in comparison to the US. The serious, brooding character of these people and the depth of human nature they expressed was eerily familiar to me.
Being a romantic, the females here-having these innately deep mental/emotional traits, coupled in with their obscure Nordic beauty, were at the very least endearing and in my most level-headed opinion- haunting.
It may appear that I am much like Playindirt. Communicating with or meeting people online. I do not search for people because I am lonely- I search because there is more beauty to be seen. There are definitely times where I am lonely, and depressed, and hopeless. But I am still blessed and will always have an aura of loyal friends revolving around me. Its intimacy that I fear for now but not forever. But as I write this every rhythm tapped on this keyboard surges me into further self-understanding. I am lucky; blessed by glorious moments. Recently I began letting myself accept the pain of others in order to strengthen not only my tolerance of people but to understand the cause and effect of human nature and the outcomes of my own actions reflected unto myself by others. I am like Playindirt in some ways, but everyone is inside or out. I can see it as well as its inverse all around me. It depends on how you carry yourself I guess.
On this second session of discussing the grand influence of the Internet- I am unaffected by the description of its magnitude. I am simply more aware of it. Its heavy pull has my eyes focused in my professors direction but stopped 30 ft closer at the sight of this screen. Distracted, sacrificing tangible, academic knowledge for the abstract- streaming into my head from never-ceasing deltas of information. At the end of this session I will submit this written work for someone else who might unearth it someday and come to understand an archetype of human nature. From this swell of turbulent water-labeled as a blog- in the ever-flowing nature of a never-ceasing delta surging ones and zeros. Come find me.
