{"id":1358,"date":"2010-01-26T01:08:58","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T06:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/?p=1358"},"modified":"2010-01-26T01:10:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T06:10:50","slug":"we-are-born-alone-we-die-alone-and-we-use-the-internet-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/26\/we-are-born-alone-we-die-alone-and-we-use-the-internet-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"“We are born alone, we die alone, and we use the Internet alone”"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nChristine Smallwood, writing at the Baffler<\/i> blog, examines the question, “What Does the Internet Look Like?”<\/a> It’s a long way from the question to the answer, and the journey is well worth it. <\/p>\n

After noting that many visions of the Internet rely on images of connectedness, she explores the essentially solitary nature of the Internet search:<\/p>\n

We are born alone, we die alone, and we use the Internet alone. You may gather round the screen with friends to watch a video clip (turning the Internet into a television), or hang out while you play music on Pandora (turning the Internet into a radio), or post to your blog, or \u201ccomment\u201d on someone else\u2019s blog (turning the Internet into a roundtable, or a bathroom wall, depending). But these are subsidiary Internet uses. The essence of the Internet, the thing it does that nothing else can do, its Internet-ness, is the search. Comedian Dave Chappelle captured this with the skit \u201cIf the Internet Were a Real Place,\u201d in which he loitered in a seedy mall like a modern Odysseus, ransacking CD stores, ducking into curtained rooms to indulge various temptations, and running away from spammers. Wandering around the Internet, the thing we are always searching for is the door\u2014the exit ramp off the superhighway, the way home. But it\u2019s hard to find. How do you know when you\u2019re done doing nothing?<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Please, read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(h\/t to Dr. Hoo for noting that Thomas Frank is one again producing<\/a> The Baffler<\/i> in print!<\/a>)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christine Smallwood, writing at the Baffler blog, examines the question, “What Does the Internet Look Like?” It’s a long way from the question to the answer, and the journey is well worth it. After noting that many visions of the Internet rely on images of connectedness, she explores the essentially solitary nature of the Internet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[264,67,106,4,42,265,7,680,56,155],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noiselabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}