Today's entry title comes from a panel held earlier this month by n + 1 at The Kitchen, which quaintly describes my relationship with the "Net." This is not to be confused with the 1995 Irwin Winkler thriller "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock, although the degree of its executional & metaphorical horrors are perhaps comparable.
As a child of the '90s born on the cusp of World Wide Web project beginnings, I have an understandably voracious appetite for the internet. I would even go as far as saying that my attachment to web-based activities exceeds that of most technologically savvy youths I know. Throughout the past four years, the internet has ruthlessly transformed from a source of swift communication & quick references to the leading mainstay in my daily rituals & customs. Admittedly, this change has immensely affected the ways (& wheres) I live my life.
I have shamelessly sat with good friends in parents's basements (not smoking weed or debating the hefty merits of the lastest Seth-Rogen-inspired movie) but sitting stagnant with separate lap-tops, accompanied only by the sounds of secretarial-speed click-clacks & the occasional "Guffaw."
Leading me to arrive at the latest apogee of online achievements: Facebook. Created like most other networks by University students, it has caused a recent furtive escalation of "face-time" with the internet. Pun indeed intended. With great discomfort, I admit that Facebook gives me yet another reason to cruise the "information superhighway." Comparable to an appetizer & dessert arabesque surrounding my long-winded online buffets - Facebook is my way of saying to the browser both "Heyyyyy, good looking," & "Is it really 4 AM? I really should go & at least try to get tired." And like a buffet, everything consumed from the broad range of choices leaves no distinct or satisfying taste in my mouth.
There have been various attempts to wean myself off this useless incessant need to know if anything has "happened" since last I checked Facebook. I've tried numerous account deactivations, contact-purging, even making a friend change my password (only to have Facebook e-mail me the new one). It's all no use. The toxic habit seems to have seeped into my genetic mapping, placing itself just above the compelling urge to feel the sun on my skin.
My devotion to the internet is not to say that I don't spend time reading (hard-copy) novels, exercising, or interacting with my own species. My fear is that I'm not just losing hours that could be devoted to reading another Nabokov novel, but that the internet has become such a central constituent of my lifestyle leaving potentially productive mind-space being frittered away by too much time in front of a screen; that an internet junkie is no better than a couch potato. I'm not certain how many words or facts I acquire each day - but it's likely they reached me through a podcast, blog or unpredictable hyperlink.
But really, I don't mean to give the "Net" an entirely bad rep. When it's not being abused or acting as the abuser itself, the internet can be a truly wonderful thing. Research that would have taken days in a paper-based library (remember catalogues?) can be reduced to mere minutes using the right URL & keyword. Take for instance Wikipedia, a loosely reliable but very convenient all-encompassing database which has enough respect for our beloved "Net" to make "Internet" a locked entry - something they have yet to do for, say, Milton, Du Bois or Faulkner.
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