At its best, the internet might represent the power to dream.
People used to put great stock in dream and imagination. A lot of this went by the boards with the advent of the industrial revolution/urbania.
Talented dreamers were the pundits of the day,…divining the future, healing, networking with others, talking to god/s. I suppose they were the real magicians. Those with a knack for seeing what others could not were granted a status somewhere above the norm. I do not believe that people were crazy for believing in such talents.
I imagine those times, and those people, to be intuitive by nature. There wasn’t a great deal of information coming their way other than church-brokered fear and rumor. In other words, people needed to rely on their dreams, their emotions, their friends and so on. And just like the internet, there was little to protect them from the frauds and the carpetbaggers. The similarities are striking.
Industry and technology presented hope. A machine works or it doesn’t; you can see it before you. Old ways of divination were scorned in lieu of promising technologies that eliminated worry. Movable type meant you didn’t have to think of it/see it yourself, or accept it on faith from some “magician”…things written and reproduced carried a new authority. Machinery meant you could beat the weather rather than seek out a sage to circumvent it. Guns made us all gods, for better or worse
The internet might best be compared to the gun, in one sense. Now we (I) can espouse whatever as fact. The weak can prey on the strong. Anyone can pretend to be anything, and who would know better? It is the new equalizer, although it would be well to point out that the last equalizer spawned massive inequality.
Personally, I hope we tend toward introspection with this “new” thing. It is a monster, no doubt. While fantastic in every respect, it is potentially a global nightmare in progress. One way or another, the circle is nearly complete…what took us away from ourselves returns us to ourselves once more…the irony is inescapable.
Our dreams can, and are taking real form on a massive scale.
We were always connected; we just forgot.
