Knowledge

The wonderful thing about the internet is that it makes the average human being seem more intelligent. No. Thats not entirely true. Encylopedia's have been around for a very long time. Does anyone remember owning a set? The ones that take up an entire shelf the length of the living room. And why on earth are they kept in the living room? Have I deliberately betrayed my "working class" background? Surely if I came from the silver spoon brigade then it would be the study. I digress. The kind of people displaying these books of knowledge very rarely used them anyway. They might as well have had a load of false book spines glued together. And probably to hide the dodgy home made porn videos.

The internet is an amazing invention. Got a question? Just type it in and more often than not you'll get a correct answer. A friend of mine described that once that wasn't the case. The information on the internet was subjective. There is/was some truth to it. Yeah and for years I thought my mother was right in saying that the Tooth fairy really did exist. Who do you believe? I have the temptation to step into the whole religion argument again but I won't. Oh okay I will for a moment. Who'd be foolish enough to believe one man's word about a higher being. Oops. That already happened.

If we aren't already there then we are on the cusp of a significant change in the way we think. Will the phrase "knowledge is power" extend beyond politics? Or will "its not what you know but who you know" seem irrelevant? The internet makes our lives easier. It makes people much more tolerant of each other. It empowers people to make more informed decisons.

Are there any negative aspects to the internet? Of course there are. Future generations could be seen as hugely over weight, pasty, spectacled, non-speaking geeks. Socially inept. The art of conversation will die. They will however be able to type eighty words per minute; with their feet. Technology is not a natural thing. It is truely man made. And because it is, it will inherently be detrimental to our existence.

I had a friend of mine who I dated briefly. Just before the date, she mentioned how communication (and she is an expert at it) these days seems so much less effectual due to email and mobile phone text messaging. And she is correct. How can one articulate oneself using emoticons etc? She said that the art of conversation is dying. Talking is one of our most primeval assets. Peace and understanding have been achieved though the simple act of face to face communication. Some might say wars too have started in the same way. Well you can't have everything eh?

I hope that despite all the advances in technology, we never lose the ability to communicate as nature intended.