It's hard for me to imagine living without the internet, and I think most other people who've grown up with it can say the same.
I was actually about to make a joke about how everyone who's not dead probably understands me, but just before writing that first sentence, to double-check the fact that the internet was invented, like, forever ago, I Googled when the internet was invented. There's a complicated history of APARNET and node networks that I can't understand, but the internet we know today, with our access to a bunch of different websites, messaging, and all that good stuff, was invented in 1990. So that's actually not like, forever ago, and now I'm embarrassed.
Obviously I could just play it off like, "Yeah, I knew the internet's only been around for 27 years," and I wouldn't have to embarrass myself, but I'm trying to make a point here: the internet today is used for so much that I feel like I need it.
People who've grown up with the internet, and maybe even those who haven't, but lived with it for a while now, are becoming dependent on it. Just two paragraphs ago I "Googled" something. And now, I'm going to "Google" when Google was invented. September 4th, 1998. About two months before I was born (November 29th, by the way. Don't forget). That's just 18 years, and in them we've grown to rely on Google for finding out information so much that "google" is a verb.
And if you asked me how I'd find all my information if we didn't have the internet, I honestly couldn't tell you. Run to the library?
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| Look at this thing! I saw it once. Be jealous. |
And the internet doesn't just provide us information. It gives us entertainment. You know, like memes and Netflix. And I'm pretty sure we can all agree that people are obsessed with those things. Okay, maybe just teenagers like memes, but Netflix? Everyone loves Netflix. Or Amazon video. Whatever.
In one of my classes some time ago, we all discussed what we needed to have in an ideal world, and the majority of us said the internet. There was some argument, but ultimately I remember us all agreeing that in terms of survival, of course we don't need the internet, but we've come so far at this point in time that we can't really live without it.
But is that really true? Do we really need the internet, for things like knowledge and entertainment?
The novel Feed by M.T. Anderson takes place in a future where everyone has the internet implanted in their brain (it's called the "feed") -- so they have constant and essentially unlimited access to information and entertainment.
Did you know that half of people with a CPAP machine don't even use it? Well, what about the people in Feed with access to information? Do they use it?
It doesn't look like it. In the beginning of the book, the main character Titus's friends have an argument about whether the face is an organ, and nobody bothers to search the feed for "is the face an organ?"
And Titus is pretty sure that, because of the access people have to information with the feed, people do need the internet. In the book, after a hacker interferes with the feeds of Titus and his friends at a party, technicians have to take the feed out of their brains to make sure they haven't been bugged with viruses.
So for a few days, Titus and his friends are left without their feeds, and Titus says this while thinking about how much he misses the feed:
"People were really excited when they first came out with feeds. It was all da da da, your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, closer than their fingertips, etc. That's one of the great things about the feed -- that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit" (47).
George Washington, who fought in the revolutionary war, died in 1799. The Civil War began in 1865.
Clearly, it doesn't make a difference how much access to information Titus, and everyone else in Feed, have in their heads. Titus takes pride in how supposedly "smart" the feed makes people, but if the example he uses to prove his own point is wrong, I'm not so sure he's right.
We even believe today that countries with the internet are more "advanced" than those who don't have it. But people jump on what other people say in an instant, even without checking the information on the internet. And even though the internet has plenty of false information, the truth is there. We just have to think critically about where the information's coming from, check it with other sources, and consider if it sounds realistic based on what else we know.
But people spread information that's been proven false, or that has no evidence (even the American president, God help us) all over social media. So why do we act like the internet makes us smart?
And what if you couldn't binge watch Orange is the New Black or laugh at the distorting of Bee Movie in every way possible? Well, it sure sounds like Titus had fun without the feed. After a couple of days in the hospital without a word from the technicians, he tells us:
"We decided we needed to be cheered up big-time. So Marty invented this game where we blew hypodermic needletips through tubing at a skinless anatomy man on the wall...It was the beginning of a great day, one of the greatest days of my life. We all played the dart game, and we laughed and sang 'I'll Sex You In.' Everyone was smiling, and it was skip" (57).
Titus literally says that these days, the days without the feed, were the best of his life. If that isn't proof that the people in this future can have fun without the internet, I don't know what is.
He has fun because he's playing the game and singing to the song, which he mentions got annoying to everybody who witnessed the hacker attack, with his friends. I don't want to sound like a cranky grandma complaining about "kids these days," but I do think that the internet makes us forget about the value of interacting with our family and friends.
His experience with his friends in the hospital reminds me of the fun I have every year with my family when we go to Ocean City, Maryland. We don't sit around on our laptops, and though what we do do isn't much (watch Family Feud on GSN, a channel we don't have at home, go to the beach, walk on the boardwalk, play mini golf -- little things like that), we always have a great time. Just thinking about it makes me happy. What matters is the people I'm spending time with (wow, this is getting really deep and personal). We love each other, and we know each other. Our connection makes it easy to joke around with each other. I can't even explain it that well, but it just makes the trip so fun.
So we don't really need the internet to have fun.
It looks like we don't need it at all.
Biel, O.
Sources:
Feed, M.T. Anderson.
Word Count: 1376
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