Remember the children’s nursery rhyme about the little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead? When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid.
The internet is like that little girl with the curl.
When the internet is good, it is very good. Want to find the score of last night’s game? Need to see how much your investments are going up (or down)? Looking for something to do this weekend around here? Can’t figure out how to change a light bulb? The internet is very good.
When the internet is bad it is horrid. Scams, pornography, fake news, altered videos and photos, hackers stealing your life savings, threats, doxing. All horrid.
The internet, basically, is a microcosm of our lives and our society, just with a broader reach.
Before the internet, I could stand on the street corner and shout that I would give $100 to everyone who heard me make the offer. Living in Clarkton, I wouldn’t expect to dole out much money.
With today’s internet, I could offer $100 to everyone who replies to my post. I would likely run out of money in less than a minute.
Same message. Different reach. And, no, I’m not going to give you $100 for reading this column.
The internet is kind of like a shovel. I can use a shovel to dig a hole and plant a tree to add beauty to my yard or I can use a shovel to knock you over the head, take your wallet and steal your car.
You get the idea. The internet can be good and the internet can be bad. It’s how you choose to use it.
It’s amazing how far technology has advanced over the past 30 years.
When the Fayetteville Observer-Times launched its website in 1995 — foto.com for Fayetteville Observer-Times Online — we had to manually code every page using HTML, or hypertext markup language. Readers don’t see the HTML codes, but they’re there. Every paragraph began with
and ended with
.
If you’ve never seen webpage coding, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and hit the u key. The pages are more complicated today than in the mid-90s, but you get the idea.
Then, we had to dial-in on a 28.8 modem to connect to the server in order to FTP the new stories and updated section pages to our site. However, the Observer-Times also was an Internet Service Provider at the time with about 10 lines. Therefore, there were times when trying to update the site that we would get a busy signal and had to wait for a customer to hang up.
Now, everything is automated, you don’t have to know any code to post and with a click of a mouse your page is updated in an instant.
Our first home connection to the interest was an AOL account on either a 9600 baud or 14.4 modem. Since we lived in Bladen County, there was no local ISP number to call. It was a long-distance call to Fayetteville at 10 cents per minute. Pages took forever to load. Needless to say, we didn’t do much web surfing in those days.
Nowadays, there’s high-speed internet, Wi-Fi, satellite internet and radio, smart phones that make some of us feel dumb, streaming, texting and direct messaging.
We can be constantly connected to friends down the street or chat with someone on the other side of our planet.
We can share every detail of our lives on social media, although, most of the time, too much information really is too much information.
I’ve sat inside Lenovo Center at Carolina Hurricanes games and watched replays from the TV broadcast on my phone.
I don’t know how I figured out how to drive to the old Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta to watch the Braves or find my hotel before Google Maps.
These days, every time you go outside you must presume you are being recorded. Whether it’s a government agency, a random person walking down the street holding up a phone or someone watching your every move to cause trouble.
I’ve been asked if I thought there was too much information available on the internet. I don’t believe so. Just because the information is there doesn’t mean I have to access it, but it’s available if I need it.
The internet can be like the wild, wild West. You need to be aware of your surroundings. The internet also can be helpful, informative and fun. Much like that little girl with the curl. When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid.
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