How did we live without the Internet. You can take your mobile phones, plasma TV's game boys and shove them up the hairiest part of your hairy arse. But not the Internet, these days we are like Siamese twins joined at the fingers. Twits Twittering, Face book, Bebo, MySpace, your space, his space, blogging.....never have so many people had the opportunity to publish so much personal detail and so much shite about themselves in one place.
Its scary to think that people can have friends all over the globe and share the most intimate details of themselves and their lives over the Internet and yet never manage to even know their neighbours surnames. Why would anyone tell you their date of birth, movies they watch, distinguishing features and show pictures of themselves and their children to the whole world or at best to some faceless strangers.
Aside from the desire to publish every last bit of information about your self on the net so that some like minded (pervert) can converse electronically with you, the Internet is probably single greatest educational tool since the blackboard duster. Where else can we see 'shopped photos of Brian Cowen, learn the starting line up for the 1983 Limerick Hurling team in their epic league game to Tipperary or watch every form of porn known to man.
The Internet has liberated Ireland and allowed 100 years of censorship to be eroded in a day. Thanks to this wondrous invention we can now (no matter how depraved or perverted our tastes may be) find pictures, movies and like minded individuals to indulge ourselves.
No other tool developed allows us to share information, pictures, feelings, emotions and now video as easy as the Internet. Through this wonderful medium we can laugh, we can cry, we can dance around in frilly pink underwear holding a large cucumber whilst conversing with a truck driver named Skeeter in Arkansas whilst he pretends to be a cute 21 year old co ed named Debbie.
The Internet has allowed us to bare our souls and share our hopes dreams and fears for this world. It allows us to open up our lives and make this world we live in a smaller more humbling place. Best of all we can do this anonymously. Safe in the knowledge that no matter what shite we say, no matter what we write that a level of anonymity exists. Where else can you stumble into a forum, openly declare your love/ hatred for a topic, insult and flame (is that word dead now) everyone that disagrees with your opinion and feel you like a panellist on Questions and Answers or prime Time trying to look intelligent and not stare at Miriam's boobs. Where else can we lol, rofl, lofl or even gsfy (go shite for yourself) with complete strangers.
We live in the golden age. Once Bosco sang "if you want to know the time ask a policeman"....now world clock will tell you the time in Rio De Janerio, New York, Moscow and Tubbercurry. Once we read and studied to find knowledge. Now we can ask yahoo or Google or search through Wikipedia. Wikipedia, a value database of semi fictional bull shit soon to become the new Bible. Once we sat and spoke to each other over a pint, a cup of tea, the garden fence. Now we converse by PC, mobile phone. We speak more with our fellow contributors to the Star Wars thread on sciencegeeksdotcom that we do to our own families. We can watch sunsets in the Arctic, camels pissing in the Sahara and hookers on the streets of Amsterdam and never have to get dressed, pack a suitcase or buy a plane ticket.
Yes the Internet is all we need. Access to millions, no billions of friends. Knowledge at our finger tips. The ability to shape and help lives all over the planet and share the little gems of knowledge that have helped us through this life. A magical tool that can bring us closer together, a tool that no matter what colour, creed, religion or race you are we can all be safe in the knowledge that we are all one, we are all the same, all searching for those few good photos of Angelina Jolie in the nude.