The Internet Changes Nothing
Four years into waiting for Godot, I mean, waiting for the tech recovery, an unorthodox thought creeps into the corners of my enquiring mind. What if the Internet, rather than changing "everything" (as cited and recited in a well-known Silicon Valley quote), in fact changes nothing?
There's still plenty of suffering in the world. Plenty of existential angst for those lucky enough not to suffer physically. Traffic still seems pretty bad to me, everywhere. The phone at home still rings too much. In fact, today I'm surrounded by phones that beep, play music, and seemingly gandydance around the clock.
Gasoline is too expensive, as is insurance of all kinds, educational standards are going to hell, political discourse is still largely divisive and asinine, wind chills and high humidity remain popular topics of conversation, and my teen-age kids are driving me nuts.
The earth still rotates precessionally on its axis, the moon is reliable in its phases, the sun does indeed come up in the east every morning.
Ballplayers and entertainers are still way overpaid. There's too much gossip, too many dogs and cats, and maybe too many people. Business scandals pique our outrage. Crime is back up. The government is intruding, again.
Fear in the air, tension everywhere.
Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration. Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation. Seems like the same old ball of confusion to me. How has the Internet changed anything?
The temptation is to trivialize progress made since the time of that late 60s hit song. Nothing's changed, man. Yet the band plays on, man.
Verily I won't go biblical and scare the kids with any new insights under the sun, because I don't have any. The point is to remember that the fundamentals never change. People are people, a relativistic universe means there's no such thing as a sure thing, the walk is the walk and the hype is the hype, and the U.S. remains the only place where the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in its founding document.
Thank-you, everyone for developing, deploying, and improving the Internet. Thank-you Tim Berners-Lee for realizing its power. But no thanks to everyone who has overemphasized it, paradigmatically hyperbolized it, obtusely not gotten that it doesn't matter if you don't get it, what matters is that it doesn't fundamentally change a thing.
All it has really done over the past decade is pumped up a false New Economy then become a victim of its own press releases while hurling millions of dreams onto the cruel and rocky shores of a place known as Brutal Realityland.
The Internet is just a tool. Just another addiction to some, just another exploited medium to exploit to others, and a darn fine way to communicate to most.
Well, yes, actually it provides a great way to communicate, you know, whether by e-mail, website, or blog. It's an Alexandrine repository of knowledge, and its shopping mall aspect has kept me out of hot water on more than one Mother's Day.
Hmm, maybe it could change things if we gave it a try. Maybe it already has. It's effected thinking, strategies, and processes throughout the business world. It's made many governments more transparent to their citizens, and put other governments on notice that the democracy genie is out of the bottle. It's empowering a truly global community to create and share knowledge inexpensively, quickly, and effectively.
OK then, maybe the Internet is playing a large role in changing things for the better, and will continue to do so. But no way, no how will it ever "change everything." Let's extinguish vacuous phrases such as that from our public utterings and collective consciousness, please?
12:12:34 AM 
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