What is the Internet?

The Internet is all around us. From the millions of phones in use every day to laptops and TV’s streaming Netflix and Hulu. It allows us to communicate from anywhere in the world and connects us to people, businesses, and projects. The internet is vast and most of it has been left unexplored by ordinary people. To most people, the internet seems physical, something we can touch and change with our own hands, however, the only physical thing about the internet is the wires, service boxes, and data it uses to connect us all.

Chapter 1 of David Weinberger’s “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” and the previous readings have all explored our changing relationship with the internet. They mention our growing dependency on the internet and how we feel once we lose that connection. The links between humans and the internet are becoming stronger every day. With “The Veldt” plot still heavy in my mind, this does not feel like an advantage.

Is the internet alive? My first thought is “no.” The internet can’t breathe or reproduce, so how could it be alive. But the more I thought about the question, the more I began to doubt myself. Eventually, I settled on the thought that in a way that the internet becomes alive through the people that use it. Without anyone to use the internet, it would just sit there unmoving, however, when the people behind the screen start influencing it, it becomes alive. The scariest reality we have to face with the internet, in general, is its nonstop growth. Within the last ten years, the internet had grown substantially and we have been able to connect with more people and businesses than before. That’s only a ten year time period. Imagine the next 50 years and how it will change us as a society and as individuals.

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