Internet Apocalypse

My assimilation into the writhing mass of information, media, “user generated content” and pornography that constitutes the internet as it is today was not a sudden, over-night occurrence but rather a slow, building dependency on what is undoubtedly one of the most important collaborative projects in human history.

My first memory of using the internet is one from high-school, logging on to an internet chat room with some friends at lunch time and marvelling at the wonder of real time communication with people as far away as America without the use of letters or a telephone.

Of course, being only 14 years old at this point, naturally, we used this life changing, monumental experience to its fullest and spent the entirety of our lunch break insulting people thousands of miles away, safe in the knowledge that they could not do us physical harm. At least, not before we had chance to hide or blame the whole thing on somebody else.

How was I to know back then that the internet would become such an important part of my day to day life AND that eventually, it would be considered socially acceptable to spend time at my computer, not only acceptable, but COOL to do so… depending of course, on what my myspace page looked like, what applications I had on facebook, my latest you tube video or what pod casts I listen to. Now I depend on it solely for my news and entertainment, traffic and travel information, reviews on and purchasing of movies, books, computer games, hardware and software.

We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.

Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), The Salmon of Doubt, p. 110

As the internet is integrated further and I enter the latter stages of net dependency or “addiction” am beginning to realise, not so much what an impact access to information and entertainment has on my life, but rather, what impact the LOSS of all this would have on my day to day life. So, much in the same way that the End Timers prepare for the end of the world, stockpiling food, water, medical supplies and books on that great wizard in the sky… so this blog will attempt to scrape together pieces of every day life, media, entertainment, sights, sounds and experiences that you may hopefully be able to fall-back on after the great internet tribulation.