Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How I Use The Internet

I have a fairly “flat” relationship with the internet. But that I mean, I’m not the type of user of the internet who is constantly monitoring and exploring new sites and new ways of utilizing cyberspace. I have the places I go on the net, and I; usually (mainly) stick to them. I’m not saying that because I think that’s how things ought to remain forever; I wish they wouldn’t.

But at this point, I have a regular round I make daily when I use the internet, which includes checking the weather, email, facebook and various news websites. I someone sends me a link to a video on YouTube or Vimeo, I’ll often check it out, and sometimes that leads to bouts of an hour or so, looking at other videos that the site lumps together with the ones being displayed at any given time. I also write a blog (other than this one).

I consume a lot of other peoples’ user-generated content every time I browse the status messages of my friends on Facebook or look at a video on YouTube. And I produce my own when I post a status message or make a posting on my blog.

For someone with a relatively unimaginative sense of what can be done with the internet, I still find ways of contributing to what can be found on it. Take that as a testament to how entwined our lives now are in this young and ubiquitous medium of communication, consumption, entertainment, information—and, really, just about everything else there is. Except smell or taste. But I bet somebody’s out there working on that.