This video explains Google’s Art Project and is a fine illustration of why I love the internet: the potential it opens up for everyone. I know, people in the developing world don’t have computers – except when they do. The TED: Ideas Worth Spreading website is another reason I am held in the thrall of the internet.
Sometimes my children like to mock me – gently and affectionately, I tell myself. They find my enthusiasm for social media, and all things internet, convergence-related and interactive, well, goofy, but endearing.
“Hey moms, ” they’ll said “What’s the interwebs telling you today?” I look at them and, whatever I say, what I am thinking is: “Where do I begin?”
Why just today, Valentine’s day, 2012, here’s some things from the interwebs:
- Put this: sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5 into a search engine and you get taken here
- On the Google homepage click on the “doodle” for a lovely little animation accompanied by the acclaimed crooner, Tony Bennett.
- Go to the National Film Board of Canada site for this sweetly romantic animated short.
Yes, these are just fun, trivial time-wasters. But these just provide a respite from the heart of what I find. I have access to multiple news feeds: print, images, audio and video – the original source material. It is, at minimum, entertaining; sometimes it is transcendent. And that’s just the one-way stuff. Never mind twitter, comments on blog forums and so on…
My old fossilized brain is keeping some its elasticity because of the stimulus I get from my computer, I am convinced of that. And isn’t it better that’s what I feel – to be a lifelong learner – than choosing to retreat from this crazy world, wearing a tinfoil hat and muttering darkly about the way things used to be? At least that’s my message to my husband and kids.
So here is a virtual cupcake for you all from Communitea Café in my hometown. Perhaps one failing of the internet is you can’t actually take a bite from it…yet…
