Wednesday 29th of July '09

there's always this point where I get bored with the internet: world's largest library.
Much like television before it, it has itself to thank for my thanklessness. Chipping away at my attention span as I try and take in as much as humanely possible in order to keep one step ahead of the many friends I've amassed over the years and never hear from except in the form of a fast-forward meant to tickle the funny bone: 'ah, seen it already.. thanks (:delete).' It reminds me of playground conversations about last night's tv. There was always one trying to one-up the other because he got to stay up later than anyone else because his single-parent was an alcoholic yet you feel envious because you got stuck with two parents who only knew the good cop /bad cop-routine and set boundaries. It took me years before I caught a glimpse of Jay Leno. Now he's gone.. But where before you could be cool simply by having been privvy to information no one else has because you had cable whereas they only had whatever the number of channels was taxes pay for.. or atleast having an opinion at the ready. Now the question is not so much Have you seen? as What do you want to see? Google and ye shall find.

I've been drilling it into Andrea whenever she wishes she knew something because her teachers have omitted to teach her you can find anything you want online. She wants to become better at making patterns for clothes: there's a torrent for an e-book. She wants to see the latest fashion but can't afford the magazines: I type in 'fashion' in iTunes and all the major stores and designers turn up with their own podcast for her to download for free. Its amazing what the breaking down of regions for DVDs and tv show rights-per-country means for education. I can't afford to go back to university but I can find anything I want to learn for free online. It makes me wonder about the maintaining of standards in education that we're already having so much trouble with in the UK. There, employers have been complaining to the government about the lack of basic arithmetics and spelling skills, never mind attitudes, of young employees. If our entertainment becomes a when and where ever you want how long before our education also becomes a whatever you want. I get bored downloading on youtube if a video doesn't grab me in the first how-ever-many seconds and go to the next topic that strikes my fancy. Following a few atheists on Twitter has lead me to see videos and read articles on sites where what I thought was a basic understanding of how things work is so lacking that it makes me worry what the future might hold. After all it is not the first time an invention liberated education and led to the demise of mental prowess at the same time.

When the printing press was invented it wasn't long before people started churning out books like nobodies business. This sharing of information led to a standardisation in everything that could be measured; weights, distance, to language: spelling. Before this invention there were only illiterate people now we have dyslexia. Small price to pay perhaps for a limited number of children failing primary school but another side effect from writing everything down is the belief memory is fallible. Before, when someone showed you how to do something you didn't write it down you remembered it. If you went to court to prove or disprove something that affected your legal status and dealt with a fact from many years ago, the village elder's memory was not doubted when questioned. Nowadays we live in a time where if the tree in the forest fell when someone was around: if it hasn't been written down such things happen who will believe him? Memory, and therefore experience, lost its value. When you can look things up why bother remembering it yourself? When everything has been written down and turned into a how-to video on youtube why bother learning how to write ? My handwriting may be terrible and I can only type using two fingers, one on each hand, but what a waste to live in a world where no one bothers. A world where no one makes it to the end of this blog because its too long by my own admission if it were a monologue dubbed over a video showing stupid people doing stupid things. Perhaps worshipping at the feet of priests who claim that everything in a book must be real because we've come to believe long after it was written that everything written holds more sway than whatever anyone may say. In an internet age where anything goes is googled, the question what is true once more becomes open to interpretation. Everything is true if you can find a user group that welcomes you and I'm affraid many of us can't be bothered because of boredom when we again must rise to the task of defining right from wrong, what is fact and what is fiction. I'm inclined to but armed only with Facebook and an iPod: one which defines copyright as anything you post belonging to it and the other a device which pretends to be portable television, a modern version of the book, but unlike the medium for literature is subject to the whims of its parent company when anyone tries to post anything as an app for the world to download through its store. A company named after the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil nonetheless but that's taking it too far. Though I do wonder who could've been on facebook at the time of the Garden of Eden: "Yeeey look at me I got one friend and I'm in a relationship with her.. and its complicated" only to be kicked out and blog about all the tribes you meet when you're supposed to be the first two, 4 counting the kids. Oh.. 3. Might want to tweet that.