The Internet is the greatest invention in human history. I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that. The human potential has grown exponentially because of it. The opportunities are limitless, the sky is no longer the limit because we are all connected, all the time. The World Wide Web has effectively shrunk the world. A message that would’ve taken days gets there in seconds. Yet somehow, as a culture, we are absolutely squandering the greatest resource the world has ever known. And there’s nothing worse than just having potential.

Let me make this clear, I’m not saying this about everyone. If the past year has proven anything, it’s that the vast majority of people have the most powerful knowledge building tools at their fingertips, yet they do absolutely nothing with them. Look at last night’s GOP debate, for example. Presidential candidates, who should be the best of the best spouting lies as fact, when a simple Google search and a half hour of reading would help them formulate proper, well informed opinions. Then again, they’re just fishing for votes.

But they were talking to specific groups of people. Pandering to the anti-vaccine minority and overly conservatives who require an authority figure to vindicate the lies they choose to believe and spread. I genuinely believe that ignorance has been justified by the internet. People know the information right there, sitting in their pocket. And as the Internet makes the world smaller, it’s also made the distance between that pocket and the mind that much wider. Ignorance has gone from not wanting to know, to thinking you know everything because you have an Internet connection.

Other than that, it’s just become another distraction. The greatest source of entertainment the world has ever seen. The Internet doesn’t sleep. It’s changing at all times. There will always be something new to click on that will keep your attention. You can’t say that about TV, radio, movies, or even books. Yeah, they make new ones every day. But from this screen, I can see all of those and then some. All you need is to know where to look.

Looking back on it’s relatively short life span, it’s amazing the impact having internet access has had. It’s really been a big thing for about fifteen years now, and it has taken over the world. He who controls information has all the power, especially when the information gets to where it needs to go at the speed of click, and it never stops.

When I was in the sixth grade we got a Dial-Up connection at my house. I had no clue what to do with it. But it didn’t take me long to figure out how powerful and dangerous this could be. An avid gamer who was up to his neck in Pokémon at that point, I chose to Google for tips for my favorite game. It did not go all that well. Actually, it was pretty horrible for a first try. I Google searched “Game Boy,” the hand-held Nintendo system in which we played. So yeah, I got porn. Lots of it. And not the type I would’ve enjoyed either.

Pika!
Moral of the story: Never Google Search “Game Boy”… Unless you’re into that sort of thing.         [Photo:  Andrew _ B]

So while the learning curve was a bit steep for a sixth grader on the web for the very first time, we’re not in 1999 anymore. Dial-up is a thing of the past (thank Odin!). But now, in 2015, a year that was considered The Future in my childhood movies, I often find myself thinking about what my grade school years would’ve been if I had the resources I had now.

I recall having to call government agencies looking for information for Social Studies projects. They were never all that helpful. I can’t even imagine having to resist the temptation to just copy/paste right off of Wikipedia for a class project. Where’s that study of how plagiarism in middle-school have gone up exponentially in the past decade, huh!? I mean copy/pasting wasn’t even a thing until like my senior year in high school. And I swear, some teachers encouraged it as long as we handed something in. Literal busy work. And I would never, ever complain about it, because of how easy it was. Believe it or not, it’s even easier now.

Also, I would not like to be a teacher in this day and age. With every kid with a smart-phone on them cheating on tests has to be absolutely ridiculous. Good luck to those poor bastards, because I would’ve gotten away with it.

All in all, like with everything else, you have to take the good with the bad. And there’s plenty of bad on the World Wide Web. If you know where to look.