The Internet: A love / hate relationship

The prate falls and pitfalls I experience when I fall down the rabbit-hole of the Internet make me laugh and cry. The sense of crying comes when I feel us being distracted by so much information…that we miss the moment – and one another.

The laughter comes when I see how funny we are with the tantalizing tidbits we post
on You Tube! (just Google kittens and puppies!). My favorite part of experiencing the joy in how alike we all are --- is when I start to type in a search request. Google starts to populate the text-box with searches the millions of other hitchhikers of this Google-galaxy have similarly requested.

It amazed me one day, thinking "oh I've got one no one could have tried yet", as I
speedily attacked my keyboard with "…Is the Restasis commercial doctor-woman real or digital?". I almost fell off my ergonomic computer chair when not only did the text box
similar-search thingy take off , but it generated page after page of people wondering not only the same thing --- but queried it in even more hilarious ways than I could imagine! Apparently, I am not alone at being weirded-out by this more than bizarre looking human. I swear she is some sort of robotic-artificial-intelligence. But the gamut of
data that resulted proved she is apparently not only human, but a real doctor, based on those who seem to be "in the know"! I smiled at feeling quite connected to potentially millions of us wondering the same silly things!

Another experience seemed to show me not only how similar we are, but how
far we have come. I was watching The Today Show, when we were first introduced to President Obama's awesomely forward thinking choice of Ms. Elena Kagan as the next
Supreme Court Justice candidate. I said out loud to myself "Alright! She's GOT to be a lesbian ---- wow, now THAT WOULD be amazingly forward thinking!!!!".

Again, I found myself almost falling down in the rush to keyboard Google-search anything about her. It was as if I typed in slow-motion anticipation of what might
be populated into my text box by what I was sure millions of other inquiring minds
just HAD to know. I started with "Is Elena Kagan………_____" and then stopped.

I figured I'd get things populated like……..gay, queer, a dyke, homo….or a
cacophony of other spite filled words. I think this time I may have literally fallen off
my chair when the generated word-choice supplied was ………………. married.

I could not stop laughing….and was filled with hopeful amazement – thinking:
Wow ---- that's a step-UP for America! Instantly I next wanted to cry at the sad juxtaposition of this inquiry with today's reality of the discriminatory injustice gay American's experience by being disallowed not only the experience of marriage, but the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. I wanted to laugh again at the Catch-22, that this woman could become of all things a Supreme Court Justice.


The list of my Internet experiences runs the gamut of reactions of joy, sadness, frustration, laughter, anger, social togetherness and unrelenting social isolation. It was
Face book that pushed me over the ultimate edge when I just couldn't take the bombardment of information, the one-liners and people seeming to connect but yet seeming to be so disconnected. I found myself taking the summer off and not using ANY source of technology.

Then, low and behold in the midst of my frustration with technology and Face book feeling like it separates us, the Social Network's non-shadow side presented itself in all its glory --- by uniting us. It took just one man's ultimate frustration with non-freedom to end his life by lighting himself on fire…..to begin a revolution of fire in the hearts of others to blog, log, and twitter their angry yet peace-filled messages from Yemen, Eqypt, Syria and more. Words posted on the universally shared "walls" of Face-book, began the domino tumbling down of the Berlin-like walls that separate us. This one man's final action allowed others to begin new action by speaking in the voice that makes us One; the sound of which, due to Face book, was heard through out the world!!!!!

It leaves me with just one thought ---------------------------- Awfully Amazing!