The Internet, as defined by The Hitchhiker’s guide to the fore-mentioned internet, is the primary subject of this guide, as made apparent by the apparent patency of the proffered title. It is also vast and infinite, as defined by Masamune Shirow’s cyber-punk epic, ‘Ghost in the Shell’. It is also ‘Very Silly’ as defined by Gordon Bassett, a farmer from Kent.
Wikepedia, the encyclopaedia of the internet and a guide to being completely and utterly soulless , describes the internet as ‘a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks’. It fails to mention, at any point, how really, very nasty a place it actually is.
Because let’s face it - the guide goes on to say - the internet, is, by all accounts, a physical place now. It is your supermarket and your shopping centre. It can be your job, your relationships, or your steamy affair with a quite-obviously-fake lady of the web. You can take short vacations, watch concerts and serve tours in really horrible third-world countries as a gnarled special forces veteran, or even join an internet forum and subject yourself to a grade eight bullying.
People, by definition, are not nice to one another. We will happily eat each other’s food, make fun of one another, and destroy each other’s ozone layer. Once, two thousand-odd years ago, one man decided that everyone should be nice to each other and began spreading his word. He was promptly nailed to a tree. Since then, man has waged war and committed acts of hatred to one another. One of these acts was the birth of the internet.
The evolution of the internet can be categorized thus – by looking at the timeline of 4chan. At first, it was a great Idea and many people could access information that was important to them in a much easier way. Then someone thought ‘Hmm, I can keep my porn in here’ which was soon followed by the thought ‘I wonder how much porn we can fit in here?’
The internet may be this horrible, infinite allegory for humanity, but it is also a subject of great interest, innovation and terror. There is one thing you must always remember when studying the internet and its content, and that is;
DON’T PANIC.
