As the fairly obvious "title" portion implies, I wonder what we would do without this social staple, the common columnist's mode of putting his (or her) ideas out into the ether.
Really. I wouldn't be writing this, and know one would be reading it (if, in fact, anyone is) but for Tim Berners-Lee and stuff.
Great though Al Gore may or may not be, some other guy invented it; I'm sorry, dude. :) But I digress.
So many good things have come, and so much bad. So much sorrow and joy, reflective posts by anonymous users and day-lightening parodies of life and depressed entries from children at heart and information about restaurants and buses and maps and dictionaries and life and love and death and and darkness and the old and the new and the kind and the ill-intentioned and war, peace, and of course, most of all, creation.
An intermingling of ideas, a meeting of minds, a sharing of secrets, a telling of tales, a formation of fear, a growing of griefs- are we losing something or gaining? The flesh is heir to a thousand natural shocks and heartaches, and has been since long before we had an instantaneous way to transmit them. But does that make it worse?
What will it be like in a hundred years?
This was sort of a pretentious ramble. And it ended with a question, which may be a titch cliche. Sorry about that. And now it's out in the ether, too.
A good post, but here's a little timeline of the myth that Al Gore said he invented the internet:
http://sethf.com/gore/
I know you were just making a joke, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to put forth the facts on that situation. The media creates stories that aren't true. It's like the grade school Telephone game. By the time it comes out the other end, it means something entirely different than the original speaker intended.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
Thanks for understanding my comment was in jest, and for clarifying. It's always better to know the truth (or as close as is possible) of a situation. Just generally speaking.
Good old telephone game. Orange pizza on a piano.