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The Internet: For Good or For Bad?

The rise of the Internet and its increasing degree of ubiquity raises some very troubling questions about its effects on our society. One cannot deny its usefulness as a tool of communication and information transfer, but its problems might outweigh its strengths. While I use the Internet several hours a day (to the extent that I am almost addicted to it), I must admit the pitfalls of this very useful, if possibly detrimental, tool. It must also be mentioned that those things that are so useful about the Internet are those that are the most rarely used; besides college students who are writing last-minute papers, there are probably very few people who really take advantage of the vast amount of information that the Internet makes available at the click of a mouse. While the Internet is not an incredibly new technology when one looks at its history, we are still discovering new uses as well as long-term effects on our society. People tend to communicate as much, if not more, on the Internet than they do face-to-face, placing more of a strain on “normal” human contact. It is a beast that more than likely cannot be put back in its cage; rather, we must discover how it can be most useful and alter our already-formed bad habits.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush imagined a great mechanical information-sharing and storing device that he titled the “memex.” The Information Age had not yet begun (or was in its nascent stages) when Bush dreamed up this idea, and yet he was still dizzied by the vast amount of information one would have to sort through, especially as a scientist. He wanted to make a glorified photocopier or microfiche machine that would “scan” information and store it on miniature punch cards. Then he dreamed up a way of tracking useful searches made by previous researchers (Google and Wikipedia borrowed this idea) so that one would not have to wade through the piles of useless information one might find by searching library-catalogue style. Little would Bush know that he thought up the first search engine (he could have gotten an amazing patent on that idea if he had been born a generation or two later).

Bush was a scientific researcher, so of course he would have been immensely interested in the recording, filing, and sharing of information (1995). This kind of thing is what people often cite when trying to prove that the Internet is not (all) bad. Of course, it cannot be denied that Bush’s dream of a massive amount of information-sharing occurs every second; according to a Google search, a new website is created every 4-8 seconds (and while this information may be apocryphal, it is not surprising). What are most of these sites, though? Are they truly informational websites, or are they other, seemingly useless, things such as pornography or a teenager’s fan Geocities website for a television show? When most of us sit down to a computer with the Internet, are we trying to send, store, and receive useful information? My basic routine, repeated several times a day, is to check my school and personal e-mails, check my blog, take a pass over Facebook, and look at a couple of web comics. The only thing Bush may have deemed useful is the exchange of information through e-mail between my professors and I or between my boss and I; everything else is time-wasting entertainment. We mostly use the Internet as a wonderful way to waste time rather than an amazing tool for research.

The other main use for the Internet is communication. I have venerated the Internet in the past because it allows me to keep in touch with people I have not seen in years. As a teenager, I spent even more time online than I do now talking to friends, far and near, over AOL Instant Messenger. I was able to save myself from that awful netspeak (e.g. lol, rofl, ttyl, imho, etc.), but I know many who are older than I that do use such acronyms. Having arguments without being able to see a person’s face or hear the inflection in their words is incredibly interesting and difficult. Our way of communicating over the Internet is vastly different from how we (used to) communicate face-to-face; I had to teach my mother the difference, which is somewhat subtle, but it can make all the difference. The Internet has affected how many people communicate with one another in person. My friends who spend a good deal of time in front of their computers relate differently to people when they are face-to-face; it creates the sort of social awkwardness that we now associate with “computer geeks.”

But perhaps far worse from altering how we communicate with people, it alters how much we communicate with people. This is similar to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s problem with the wood-burning stove. Hawthorne worries that without the fireplace bringing (forcing?) people together, people will lose the sense of community that he treasures. Well, the stove might not have done this, but the Internet is furthering this doomsday scenario. At this time, we have four people and four computers in my house spread across three rooms. The majority of our time is spent on the computer (mostly on the Internet). Because of this, the majority of our time is spent apart from one another. We have a house full of friends, but we do not talk that often. It is like the wood stove, allowing people to remain apart from one another, only it is perhaps more insidious because the immobility of some of the computers in fact forces us to be apart if we wish to use them. When some of our out-of-town friends come to visit, it is not uncommon to find three or more of us sitting side-by-side on our laptops doing separate things and not talking to each other much at all. While the Internet allows for greater sharing of information and more wide-spread communication, we must ask what the quality of our communication is and what it is doing to our immediate relationships.

When Vannevar Bush was dreaming up his great memex, he could not have anticipated the turn that this comparable great thing has taken. The Internet has vast amounts of information that people are sharing, but the cynic and realist in me finds it hard to believe that very much of this information is “useful” information. I know my generation well; we use the Internet for anything but information. We use it to waste time and to “communicate.” Our communication skills are diminishing with our increased use of the Internet. Despite my (newly-developed) negative opinion of the Internet, I doubt I will change my habits. Once you have gone down such a road, it is difficult to turn back. Now we must find a way to move forward without further detriment to our society.

First experience

I have a few formative experiences with computers, almost all of which have to do with gaming. I remember having a computer in my home pretty early on in my life, probably around 1991 at the latest. It was in my parent's room, where I would sit and watch my mom typing at furious speeds, working on papers and sermons for her Seminary classes. When we eventually got the Internet (I remember our service provider was Prodigy), I played some sort of game based on the old kids' series The Babysitter's Club. I wish I could find a picture or a link for it now, but my memory of it is so poor that I wouldn't even know where to begin searching for it.

Another memory comes from when I would visit my Dad at work. I would play games on his work computer. The first game I remember on his computer was called "Beast".

Believe it or not, this picture shows an even more sophisticated version than I remember my dad playing. My Dad's version was orange and black and consisted only of letters (I think the green areas were X's). I don't much remember the point or goal of this game, but I enjoyed watching my Dad play it instead of doing his work. I also played some card games on his computer. I believe these were some sort of gambling games, but the main thing I remember is that they were very colorful and with very poor graphics.

Then, of course, there's the memory that so many of my generation has.

It's the good old 8-bit, DOS-based Oregon Trail, of course! Just looking at this picture makes me teary-eyed and nostalgic. The original 8-bit is the best of all the versions, by far. I remember having to learn the commands in DOS to start the game. I wish I could find it and play it again. The only versions I can find now are the well-animated versions, which simply do not compare. I used to go over to my friend Carol's house and we'd play Oregon Trail for hours. The people in our wagon would always be the characters from the television show "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (Sully, Michaela, Matthew, Colleen, and Brian - and it had to be in that order, otherwise we'd end up with Michaela being the baby, and we couldn't have that!). Unfortunately, one character would always die of Cholera, even though we had a doctor on board. And inevitably Brian would wander off and get lost, or possibly break his leg or something like that, slowing our wagon down. In the later versions of the game, there is a crosshatch to help you aim while you hunt; this was not so in the game Carol and I used to play. In our game, it was all a matter of facing the right direction and shooting at the correct time. It was a difficult game, but probably the most fun I've ever had on a computer, even with all the amazing things we can do on computers now.

We also played things like the Amazon Trail -- a game very similar to Oregon Trail, but in a different settings with different diseases. It was also significantly more difficult to reach the end of the game, and we would usually give up before we finished. Amazon Trail was run through Windows, so we'd have to start up Windows from DOS -- another new skill I had to learn.


Later, we played the early version of various Sim Games, such as Sim City
,

Sim Farm
,

and even Sim Ant (believe it or not)
.

We also played an educational game called MathBlaster
.
I can still remember the dripping sound from the cave and the song that MathBlaster (the character's name and the game's name were one in the same) would sing when he was walking down the hallway of the haunted house. I'm not sure how much I actually learned from this game, but we definately had fun playing it.

Looking up all of these computer games makes me very nostalgic. It also helped me discover that you can download some version of virtually all of these games to play on your computer (though for some, you need an emulator). I may take advantage of these opportunities and waste some time playing old computer games from my childhood days.

My earliest frustration with computers was with the original version of the Sims. I was so excited to buy it that we rushed straight home to load it onto my Dad's computer (which I believe is one and the same as the one from my first memory I shared). We got home only to discover that the Sims needed 3 megabytes of hard drive space -- the same amount as the total capacity of my Dad's hard drive. I was devastated. In order to play the game I desperately wanted, we would have to buy a new computer! Unfortunately, this story has no resolution because of my poor memory.

It wasn't until quite a bit later that I actually began using my computer for non-gaming purposes. Now I use it for the Internet (mainly), word processing, and the occasional game (Solitaire, Minesweeper, and sometimes the Sims 2, if I've got a lot of time to kill). It seems that the more I try to do with computers, the more frustrating they can be. The past year has been frought with constant problems with various parts of my computer and internet. I wonder if it would have been better to simply remain ignorant.

-L

Beginning the Semester

So for this Internet Studies class, I'm supposed to create a blog (already done) and then write a bit about myself. I decided to create an entirely separate blog for this class to keep things separate. Anyway, I'm Laura. I'm a Senior Art History major with a minor in Philosophy (and perhaps another one in English). My main reason for taking this class is that I need a computer designater that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out from boredom. I'm also interested in the sociological ramifications of the Internet; I'm espeically interested in how the Internet has affected the art world, and would like to be able to apply this class to my knowledge of recent trends in the art world. In a past class, I discovered a website that allows anyone to explore a Van Gogh exhibit from their computer. It takes only a short time to figure out all the bits of this small offshoot of the National Gallery of Art's website. It has interesting implications on art, because it allows everyone of every class to experience it, but it takes away a large part of the works' somewhat mystical aura. Either way, it's a pretty nifty site. There's not much else to report now. I'm sure more will be soon to come.-L