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Internet-Worship Assignment #1

It is almost comical that we have to decide whether Vannevar Bush, a great scientist and engineer of his time (born in 1890), or Nathanial Hawthorne, a great writer and complainer (born in 1804), predicted the social implications of the internet better. What is even more hilarious and confusing is that I actually agree with Hawthorne and his dreary outlook on the future. This essay will give you a quick overlook of my early run into the internet and why I believe Hawthorne’s predictions are more relative.

I only remember small pieces of my first encounters with the internet and computer. When I opened the door of my older brother’s room, there lied on his desk a large and heavy white monitor with a long vertical computer underneath it. When you pushed the large power button on the computer it would hiss at you with alien clicking noises as the monitor displayed big green lettering as it loaded. Playing the game “Myst” is the only really vivid memory I have from that computer. “Myst” was a first-person click through puzzle game. I remember for some reason being scared shitless from this game. I am not sure how old I was at the time, but it was before my family had internet.

            I was at the peak of my immaturity (age 12 or so) when I really started using the internet. I’m sure some people were using the internet to learn and converse with other fellow intellects, but it was a different story for me. Vannevar Bush would be rolling in his grave if he knew how I was using this great new technology. Instead of using it for research, like the program memex suggested, I used the internet to play hokey games, watch videos of people embarrassing and/or hurting themselves, chat with friends on AIM and partake in other juvenile activities.

Of course there was no such thing as high-speed internet at the time. There was a long waiting process to use the internet. Connecting to dial-up was so painful; watching the icon of a dot going back-and-forth between a picture of a phone and the earth as the computer made crackling and crashing noises. After this you would have to wait for the webpage to load. I created a method of counting down a certain amount of seconds in my head, trying to predict how long it would take to load, to pass the time.  I would sometimes slam my fists on my parents’ desk if it took too long. I actually blame the internet for my extreme lack of patience.

            Hawthorne could have used me as an example for the destruction technology is causing. Instead of using my free time to engage in intellectual discourse with my family and friends, I would sit with my neighbor in his parents’ study, looking at funny videos or downloading illegal music. The internet even at that time was full of possibilities and options. It was the decision of the user to either use it for research and intellectual chat with fellow enthusiasts or use it to kill time and have a laugh or two. My middle school would have us use computers to learn how to type formally. When my teachers would watch me I would pretend to be engaged in typing, but when they looked away I would resort to using two fingers to complete the assignments then play computer games if there was time left. I would actually attribute AIM for learning how to type properly.

            “It is my belief, that social intercourse cannot long continue what it has been, now that we have subtracted from it so important and vivifying an element as fire-light” (Hawthorne). I would love if Hawthorne could see our current society and write an essay (or rant) on its shortcomings and deadly faults. No more is the fire place where people converse to stay warm. I would say TV and dinner are the new fire-places, but the internet does not offer any personal sociable discourse. No one gathers around the internet to learn and discover new things. The internet is a very personal thing. It almost sucks you in to a point where you don’t even bother talking to others face to face. When I got home from middle school, I probably talked more with my friends using AIM then I did telling my parents what I did in school that day.  The internet can be used for great things, but I feel it is abused more than anything. It is hard to find a young adult reading a book, or just shooting the shit with friends. The internet has numbed our generation so much that it is easier to communicate with fingers than it is with our own voices. A great visionary and a great pessimist like Hawthorne brought up many good points of how technology is destroying discourse which can lead to even greater consequences.  

Work Cited

Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Fire-Worship, from Mosses from an Old Manse, 1854." Eldritch Press. Web. 07 Sept. 2011. <http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/fw.html>.