The Internet

You know what I’ve been thinking about lately?  The internet.

The past couple of weeks of my life have been consumed with the consumption of basketball games as March Madness has taken center stage in the Metrick household.  I’ve been cheering for my beloved Syracuse Orangemen, running my annual tournament pool and watching my 2-year-old son work on slam dunking a ball through his mini-hoop in the hallway.  Unfortunately for him, he appears to have his father’s ups.

As a basketball fan, I’m always happy to see March roll around, but I’ve been particularly pleased about it the last few years.  That’s because in our brave new technological world I don’t have to hope against hope that the game I want to watch will be broadcast locally.  No sir.  Nowadays I can watch any NCAA tournament game I desire simply by logging on to NCAA.com.

This development is, in a word, phenomenal.

On Friday night, as I sat at my computer watching SU lethargically self-destruct against the Oklahoma Sooners, I started thinking about all the modern day technology that has utterly changed the course of my media-consuming life (Tivo, Ipods, YouTube, Facebook, etc.).  All of these gadgets brighten my daily existence because of the internet; that wonderful information portal that comes into our homes through a wire in the wall.

You've come a long way, baby.

Ten years ago, the worldwide web (does anyone even use that term anymore?) was in its infancy and being brought into most American homes via a standard phone line, which made logging on sound much the way I imagine death sounds.  Now, it’s a high-speed tsunami of information that makes no unnerving noises and presents us with the world.  It has changed the way we do everything.

At this point, one of the few daily activities that isn’t enhanced by the presence of the internet is using the bathroom, but something tells me there’s a start-up out there working around the clock to change that.  Needless to say, I’m looking forward to E-Pooping in the near future.

Well, I love the internet and I don’t care who knows it.  I love it wholly and completely.  I love the internet the way the Dharma Initiative loves jumpsuits.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve used the internet to find countless pieces of valuable information, buy baseball tickets, watch TV shows, listen to radio stations, pay bills, rent DVDs, share photos and waste time in more ways than I ever thought imaginable.

Along with oxygen and donuts, the internet has entered the pantheon of things I can’t live without.

But while I sit here and wax poetic about the glorious glory that is the online world, there are clearly some downsides to this wonderful invention.  For instance, it has much – if not everything – to do with the collapse of our nation’s newspapers.  Long running publications like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver have bitten the dust and there are countless other dailies staring down the barrel of the same gun.

Combine this trend with the fact the internet helps keep publicity seeking pinheads like the OctoMom in our daily public discourse and it’s clear to see this technology possesses a dark side.

And there are probably a myriad of ways in which the internet might ultimately screw us in the end.  Part of me is deathly afraid there will be some Phillip K. Dick-like twist in which our information superhighway  leads to a purge of the human race and makes those of us who survive realize it was all too good to be true.

That’s gonna suck.

But until that day arrives, I’m just going to sit comfortably on my rump looking for meatloaf recipes while listening to a podcast of “Meet the Press” and checking NBA box scores.  It’s an excellent time to be alive.