The Internets

I can't believe I ever lived without the Internet.

I remember the first day I heard of this thing, this World Wide Web. It was 11th grade, English. Mr--oh, excuse me--Dr Eliason's class. (I didn't care for the man. He told me I was a Republican because I thought -- and still do -- that Henry David Thoreau was an ass.)

But, Eliason exposed us to the Internet. (Or, if you're our president, the "Internets.") This was 1994, the infancy of mass, public web usage. I was, suitably, impressed. This was something that made (or would make) every other reference obsolete! Door-to-door encyclopedia salesman committed mass suicide. I would never have to go to the library again!

Well, naturally, that was overstating the facts a bit. I didn't even register an email account until I was in my twenties. My early college work was done on a dos-based word processor, and I did, indeed many times over, have to go to the library.

But today, all of that is like a bad acid trip. Today, I amuse myself for hours--days!--at the keyboard. There is nothing I can't know! Or, more often, there is no tiny lull in the real world that I cannot fill with cyberamusement. Is there a better way to spend 15 minutes than by watching European commercials on YouTube?

But when, inevitably, there is something I can't discover about the world via the wire in the wall (or the phone in my pocket), my brain waves begin to stutter. Much as city-dwellers have lost the ability to care for themselves without 24-hour drugstores and Starbucks, I have, apparently, lost the ability to think for myself.

As evidence, I submit to you a list of things I've recently had the impulse to Google:

What kind of present does Ken want for his birthday?
Recipe for my (dead) mother's spaghetti.
Name of the town my grandmother was born in.
Picture of the house we lived in when I was seven.
List of the music studied in my Into to World Music class circa 1996.
The name of a plant I have a picture of.
The last chapter of a book I forgot to bring to work with me.
What I need to buy at the grocery store.

Can I find, in a round-about way, the answers to some of these questions by typing queries into a search engine? Maybe. I could probably find a forum to post the plant picture, and wait a week. Or scan random plant pictures until I die of dehydration. I might be able to find my grandmother's family--for a small fee. I can certainly get ideas for presents, but the point is, I have to actually use my own powers of deduction to find suitable gifts. What kind of guy is Ken? What does Ken like? On that, I am afraid, the web is silent.

Alas, the Internet is also silent about the contents of my refrigerator. About my whereabouts at age seven. About my ancient college courses. These are the details of a life that have no quantitative equal.

I suppose, though, we should all be grateful for that. Maybe Thoreau was right all along. Asshole.