Intentionally Inexperienced

There is no denying that the internet is amazing. It allows us to answer every question that could ever pop into our brains in a matter of moments and then provide us with hours of free entertainment once that is done. You can do serious research in one window and look at the IMDB page of a random Bond villain to see if he ever worked in show business again in another. On top of that there is all the music and movies you could ever want to hear or see, including shows from our childhoods which we never thought we would ever see again (and it could all be free, depending on your feelings regarding things like copyright laws). But it's not just cat videos, college dissertations or old episodes of "The A-Team" because the internet can actually provide us with useful services. There are podcasts which provide us intimate looks into the minds of writers, actors and athletes, blogs where aspiring writers can put there words out for the world to read and many video sites which allow people who want to become directors can hone their craft and be discovered. And that's just the artistic side - the internet is also extremely practical. Seriously, in 30 minutes on the web you can find a new job, apartment, car, and girlfriend - tasks which would take you weeks if you wanted to do them on foot. I know the wheel was pretty amazing at the time, but I am confident that when all is said and done the internet will go down in history as the greatest invention ever. That being said, maybe the internet isn't for everyone.

Lately I keep seeing a series of PSAs in which people are being shown how to use the internet to do simple tasks for the first time. One person is paying a bill online, another is purchasing plane tickets and the third is chatting with her family for the first time in years (there has to be more to that story than simple lack of computer skills). I assume the idea behind the PSA is to inspire people to get out there and learn new skill. Obviously I am in favor of that and recognize that the first step when learning a new skill is admitting you have work to do, so anything which tells people that the help is there when they finally decide to ask for it is a good thing. But while I think people experimenting with new technology is great and understand that to a lot of people computers are intimidating, I can't help but shake the fact that the internet is not a particularly new concept. Also, it is not very complicated, so if you haven't figured out how to pay a bill online by now I am pretty sure the internet is going to be wasted on you. The other thing is that the people in the video appear to only be a few years older than me. Listen, my father basically made me sign up for an email account and told me it was going to be something I would need going forward, which I didn't really believe at the time. However, that was about 20 years ago and I knew I was wrong within a couple of weeks. That means these people grew up in the same world I did and that world pretty much demanded you knew how to work the internet.

Whenever I see these PSAs my reaction to them feels to be very similar to how I react when I see ads telling people not to smoke or that they need to wear their seatbelts - if these people don't know they should be doing these things by now there may just be no saving them. In addition to that, sometimes I wonder if certain people staying off the internet isn't the worst thing in the world. Perhaps these internet avoiders exist so that someone out there will still buy stamps or keep the travel agency industry going. [Sidebar: Not to mention, these people haven't been vetted. You and I may know you don't need a license to use the internet but these guys don't so why don't we use their naivety to make sure they aren't going to just be another bland internet voice? For all the great things the internet, its ability to be accessed by everyone is simultaneously its best and worst feature. Maybe the fact that these internet newbies had never learned how to log on was the universe's way of balancing that out. Think about it - if the world has gone for this long without hearing from these people on the issues and no one noticed their absence, there is probably a reason for that. I'm not trying to be the arbiter of the web here, but something tells me these late-bloomers are the people who fill comment sections with poorly-spelled insults and then send mass-forwards about conspiracy theories to all their relatives. I'm just saying that if that is all they plan to use the internet for maybe we should leave them in the dark ages.]

My point is that telling people they need to use the internet is not the same as telling people they need to watch "Breaking Bad." It would be nice if they did the latter, but they pretty much no longer have a choice with the former. As the last person in my family not on Facebook I can appreciate that there are people out there who refuse to sign up for the latest fad on principle alone. There is something admirable about not signing up for something just because you see everyone else doing it - even if you are going against the crowd for no other reason than to be a contrarian I can respect that childish position as long as you stick to your guns. But I don't care how out of touch you may want to be at some point you simply can't fight the movement anymore and I think at this point we can safely declare that the internet is here to stay. I know it is annoying to spend time learning a skill which is obsolete by the time you get around to using it, but I promise you the internet is not going to suddenly become like learning how to use a slide-rule. Not only are the days of having to do almost everything online here, they were here several years ago. That means at some point these people made a conscious decision to be ignorant regarding the internet and now they are being forced to scramble because the world is passing them by. Of course, if you are looking for a place in which actions don't really have consequences the internet is the place to be. Apparently these guys already knew the most important rule of the world web web already.