Here I am again sitting at my computer, my job is to write about
the positive aspects of the Internet. I’d like to think of
myself as a bit of a novice philosopher as well as writer. The
other day in poetry class at university my lecturer mentioned a
quote from a guy who I had already read and enjoyed,
Baruch/Benedictus Spinoza. The quote mentioned was quite a
simple one, and in my opinion simplicity is the best form of
communication (and everything else for that matter). Spinoza
once said, “Reality is perfection.” I feel this idea is quite a
powerful one indeed, in relation to all aspects of life,
including the Internet.
Where do you go these days when you want to find out about
anything? Church? School? Parents? No, you go to the Internet.
The Internet is the collective pool of unconscious, sub
consciousness, and conscious ideas, beliefs, knowledge and
wisdom of humanity from the past to the present. There has never
been such a tool available for us. Of course there is a
perfectly imperfect amount of crap out there to sift through as
well, but that is intrinsic in this perfectly balanced reality
that has always existed.
So, if reality has always been perfect, why is the existence of
the Internet anything special? The truth is, it is only as
special as anything else in life. Now, you have to ask yourself,
“Is life special?” I think you know the answer to that one…then
again there’s that perfect paradoxical balance. Why the Internet
then? Well, my younger brother once said, and I don’t know where
he pulled this little tidbit of wisdom, “The only constant in
the Universe is that everything is in constant transition.” The
Internet exists because of a natural progression in human
thinking; it’s an evolution of our collective minds. It is a
constructed idea formed through the process of eternal change.
Human beings have a huge history spanning at least half a
million years. As well as the magic feeling of love there has
always been the balancing emotion of fear. It seems that over
time societies go through different stages where one of these
feelings dominates and then permeates general actions by the
community. At the moment many people would find it hard to
disagree with the fact that we are in a period of fear. With
war, hatred and segregation prevalent in reality as well as the
‘reality’ presented by the media news and TV/film, fear is
reigning supreme in many of our daily interactions.
This relates to the use of the Internet because it looks as
though people are afraid to get on the Web. I used to be afraid
for Pete’s sake! To tell you the truth I still have some
irrational fears when it comes to researching a paper for
school. I often think, “Will I find the ‘right’ information?”
The answer of course is that there is always a possibility of
things going wrong, that’s this perfection of reality. Life
would be stale, stagnant and sterile otherwise. The key lies in
our belief in this perfection. The Internet has eliminated the
need to go to libraries and carry around huge books just to read
small sections of each. There is also less need to get to a
science library and then sociology, mathematics etc. So much
information is now available to people in our own homes.
Whether you are researching seventeenth century philosophers’
ways of thinking for personal or professional reasons, or even
just looking up information on how to make your own chai tea, or
on how to change the oil on your car; the Internet is a source
for so many areas of interest it is simply mind boggling. It is
truly the most perfect form of reality’s perfection in modern
contemporary society. That’s why they call this the Information
age right? The only problem has to deal with the perfectly
imperfect amount of pornography that constitutes more than half
of all websites on the Web. What does this say about our current
moral disposition in our changing perception’s construct of
reality? I’ll leave you with that one to ponder…
About the author:
Jesse S. Somer M6.Net http://www.m6.net Jesse S. Somer is a
novice writer and philosopher thinking about the real meaning
behind the existence of the World Wide Web. Check out his web
log at www.thepowerofeverythingthatis.com
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