Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World

Baffling how seriously the internet has changed the world (feel odd using such terms) in a short period of time, revolutionizing global communications and culture and commerce in a relatively unobserved historical 100m dash, considering, like the invention of the plane or the automobile, the telephone or the television, hyperreactively interconnected, immediate inter/national accessibility, enticingly coaxing debate.

You don't even have to leave the house anymore really if you can find a job online and have your groceries delivered, even if nature still remains the internet's greatest competitor, there being no cybersubstitute for hiking around in unknown wilds.

Even if you can surf the net while doing so.

I suppose generations are now maturing in a world where they've never known what it's like to exist without the internet, growing up in a remarkably different social environment (I'll be that guy in 40 years if I quit smoking).

Could humans stop actually playing sports and replace athletic endeavour with virtual surrogates or robots slowly over the course of the next 500 years?

Could real world shops be completely replaced by online überboutiques wherein you can acquire whatever product you thematically desire?

Could shut-in-ism become as natural as strolling through the neighbourhood or visiting a local cinema or heading out for Indian food or browsing new selections provocatively presented at a local bookstore?

Schools function as a challenge to such possibilities because you actually have to leave the house to attend school and schools themselves provide opportunities to play sports and tactically engage with physical objects, thereby inculcating the love of travelling about searching for this or that, meeting new people (not always pleasant as an old friend hilariously mentioned the other day), physically experiencing the world at large.

But you could create online schools where teachers teach hundreds of students from home simultaneously while removing the intricate travelling to and fro from the curious lifestyles of postmodern children.

Is some internet term going to challenge postmodernism? Has that happened already? With a focus on Neuromancer?

Such an idea seems quite strange but the internet itself seemed like first rate science-fiction in the early 90s, and now I'm online almost every day, for extended periods, investigating, relaxing, reading, even when I happen to be on vacation.

My cellphone has even replaced my watch, alarm clock, calculator, dictionary (still have a giant Oxford), flashlight, compass (I don't use a compass), map, dictaphone, camera (still have a physical camera), stopwatch, and timer, to name just a few items available upon as free bonuses.

I can also communicate with people around the world face to face practically anywhere I happen to be even if the costs are sometimes prohibitive.

Nutso but natural for today's youth.

STNG's "The Game."

Perhaps things are moving too quickly, the Snowden factor having introduced legitimate cause for alarm, perhaps social interactions will become harsher if physical gatherings disappear and knowing someone only consists of virtually conversing, like characters in a video game, but people be chillin' partout in Montréal throughout the year, and I can't imagine all its energizing real world activities ever being usurped by electronic knickknacks, convivial though they may be, but I grew up before the internet went mainstream, and enjoy seeing people out and about even if I'm the worst at meeting them (this doesn't bother me).

Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World presents a mixed bag of more thoughtful commentaries on the internet's impact on civilization (again, such a term is appropriate), accompanied by his endearing obnoxious cheek, like the kid who was always being disciplined in class picked up a camera to observe the people who graduated.

Definitely worth checking out.

There really is no substitute for nature you know.

You just need some time to sit there for days and listen to the sounds or the silence.

Such suggestions may seem futile on day 1 when you're still immersed in urban psychologies, but as the days pass and you slowly integrate, nature's humble orchestrations symphonically resound, like the motivational cheetah, or a glass of red wine.

So true.

*It helps if you're sitting there one day in the woods and a raccoon comes wandering up but doesn't notice you, and then, upon suddenly realizing you're there, bolts straight up the nearest tree. And you're like, whatevs raccoon, I'm just chillin', relax.