Retraction

[andrewducker]

The Internet is not Shit.

Sorry if I alarmed anyone earlier.

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I think the following quotation sums it up:

"We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. Technology is not
changing it much, if at all."--Steve Jobs

Yes, the Web (which is what they're really talking about here -- the Web is not the Internet, and you're stupid if you think you're special just because you had access to the Internet in 1995) is a useful tool that makes many things more convenient than they were before, but few things possible that weren't before. If you expect it to change the basic nature of human existence, you're stupid. If you're disillusioned because it hasn't changed the basic nature of human existence, then you're also stupid. Have I used the word "stupid" enough times in this comment? Stupid stupid stupid.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Two data points, one personal, one merely because I know a good number of transsexuals.

1) Every friend I've met in the last decade (including people who live in Portland) is either someone I met on the internet or the SO or close friend of someone I met on the internet.

2) Even more than queer youth, transsexuals have both made powerful on-line community and have used the net to monkeywrench and work around around (and specifically to help others monkeywrench and work around) the often pointless and occasionally actively harmful medical system that governs their access to hormones and surgery. According to my friend Aaron, available resources for FtM transsexuals are many times better than they were a decade ago, all due to the net.

Most of the net is worthless, this is hardly a surprise, so are most books, most TV, most movies, most art, and most of just about everything else that humans create in most societies. This is a fact about life, not about the internet.