This is the story of playing in traffic.
I have been working on the Internet for a long time. A long, long time. I've worked on many sites. Many, many sites. There is a lot of money flying around your head right now. There's a lot of money flying through your head right now. It could give you cancer. It's definitely mutating cells. But that's evolution, ya know?
Every time you land on a page, you've cost someone money. You've made someone money. You've had an effect on what Google thinks of you. What Google thinks of you means a lot. It changes the entire fabric of the net. I care more about what Google thinks of me than I care about what basically anyone else thinks of me. Because I spend a lot of time on the net. Probably you, too.
There are databases somewhere that know me. They know what I want to see and when I want to see it. If you asked them nicely, they could tell you my favorite foods and my favorite movies and what kinds of cars I like and what kinds of people I like. They could tell you when I've been happy. And they could tell you when I've been sad. And they could tell you what you'd need to do to make me feel better. I don't think I have any friends that know all of that.
I have a friend who took her Facebook page down a while ago. She's not into social media. I told her that was just kind of foolish. I once put a picture of her on Twitter. She made me take that down, too. On some level, I think she thinks that not being on Facebook means she has more privacy. She doesn't really because everything on the net can be watched, monitored and tracked.
Here's the thing. If they let me play with the code of The Dartmouth's website, I could watch everything you do on the site. I could watch your mouse move on my screen. I could figure out what sites you've been on. I could figure out how long it took you to read articles. I could figure out a lot. It'd be pretty interesting to see that, I think. Maybe I'll ask the editors nicely.
I ardently believe that the net is the greatest thing that our species has produced. Either the net or love. The net's probably more useful. Love has never distributed GIFs of cartoon cats to millions of people. People think that there are a lot of problems with the Internet. There really aren't.
It works pretty damn well. There are security problems with some of the protocols used, I guess. But the biggest problem with the net is the people using it. It's kind of like parallel parking in that way.
The net is giving. Ask it anything, it can give it to you. You usually don't even have to ask. It'll figure out those things for you. Don't worry about it. It knows its job. Let it work. You'll be happy, and it'll be happy. Everything copacetic.
The net is everlasting. While we exist, the net will never go down. It can't. It will never fail you. Sure, bits and pieces may change. They may not be there forever. But other things will replace those parts you miss. Eventually, you realize that the new bits are better than the old. Thinking that they weren't was your bad. It's OK, though. The net forgives you.
The net is infinite. There are no borders on the net. If someone tries to make one, it's usually pretty trivial to take it down. You just hit it for a while. The net can't be captured. It can't be summed up. You can't give an elevator pitch about the net. It's bigger than that. It means more. It's actually kind of terrifying. How can you interact with something that big? You see it through a small window. I've seen it the way it actually exists. It's terrifying.
The net is many things. You could say that's it's everything. I'm not going to, but you could definitely say that about the net. You could definitely tweet that or blog it. Definitely. And the Internet would love you for it. Because even though the net knows you're wrong, the net loves you for you. You keep the net going. You are the reason it stays up, ever vigilant. It wants to be there for you. It loves you like that. I wish I knew people like that. I'd probably be fine with a God like that, too.
