Garvey

It's been a long time since I held any real estate on the blogosphere...

To be rather honest, I often find myself nostalgic for "The World That Was" before the advent of the internet. I miss long phone calls, receiving letters in the mail, reading the paper in the morning, watching the news in the evening, finding an answer in the pages of a book instead of on a Google search or in a Wikipedia entry... but that world is gone, and, as much as I'd hate to admit it, I abandoned it as quickly as my peers.

I'm not positive, but I don't remember feeling nearly as alone surrounded by books and records when I was 17 as I do now surrounded by the myriad avenues of the vast and varied landscape of cyberspace. A friend once told me she felt horridly alone in New York City despite being encircled by millions of people all the time, and I wonder if a similarly bitter statement could be formulated about the infinite expanses of the internet, or even the strange distance that the internet has put between us... Instead of calling one or two good friends to see if they are going out, we change our Facebook status or post a MySpace bulletin asking numerous people, not all friends, if, when, and where they are planning to be that evening.

I seem to remember people saying the internet would make our world smaller, but it seems to have done the opposite. Where once we were happy with our towns, with calling around looking for our friends, with the local bookstore, now we have hundreds of "friends," we know where they are through Twitter or their AIM away messages, and I can't seem to count how many times I've picked up a record or a novel at a local store and thought, "I saw this cheaper on Amazon."

But this is the world in which we exist, and I am as guilty as the next person -- I do not believe that a knowledge of what it is that I am doing offers me any safe haven or immunity... if anything, it makes my actions all the more reprehensible if I am to continue to chip away at the Pinnacle Achievement of the Information Age.

And it's not all downhill...

Just yesterday, I spent the morning reading about the differences between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and why the different ground conditions in Afghanistan would make a "Surge-like" strategy ill advised); how 24's Jack Bauer has influenced America's interrogation policies; that Sam Raimi has, at the very least, said there is a chance for another installment in the Evil Dead franchise at Comic-Con; and felt wonderfully relieved to have an open mind when confronted with American Conservatism.

Obviously, the fact that I have decided to have another crack at a blog should also demonstrate the peculiar blend of feelings I have for the internet. As complicated as these feelings may be, our lives have been vastly changed by the world wide web -- one could even go so far as to say much of our lives are lived here.

If this is indeed the Brave New World, I'm already a part of it, for better or worse.