On Comments and the Internet City
Hereby I would like to thank the small minority who have sent me genuine comments on this blog for the last three years.
As finding these comments amongst hundreds of spam is like looking for rare shells amongst pebbles, I could only manage to tick the ‘approve’ option, unless there was a direct question that required my response.
I would like to add that if these comments were written spontaneously, that is wonderful.
And if they were written with an afterthought seeing it as fair and necessary to relate to me in a realistic way –as much as it can be possible on the internet – , then that is wonderful too, for which I am grateful to you.
Basically internet is a - mainly two dimensional – commercial city where you can visit a church, a gallery or the red district depending on what you usually look for in a city*.
You definitely cannot get fit by walking around in this city, but you can get a bus (modem), a taxi (basic broadband) or a helicopter (speedy broadband) to your destination.
The rulers of this city make a record of places you visit (and if they imagine you are a trendsetter they will extend this to phone bugging etc as well) and try to lurk you to the areas they think you may be interested in.
The retailers of this city who are not visited frequently, hire ‘proactive’ sellers to either harass you (spam) or in case your home is visited frequently, to attach themselves to your door like leaches that have labels stuck to their chests.
I had experience of telex 30 years ago, and my first online experience was in 1988.
By the time I first surfed** the internet I had read and heard so much praise about it that I was almost shocked how one dimensional it looked and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
It is only in the last four years that I have visited this city more frequently.
This city is vast. However one finds out soon enough that a lot of items are just copy and paste of another, with other words this is a city of many time_wasters and attention_seekers_at_any_cost. Or perhaps I am only talking about its high streets.
It is mainly the city of the petty, where many have a publication at home with exactly the same content as their interest group, but with a different heading.
It is the city of disrespect.
The disturbing patterns of behaviour by faceless citizens prove that manners are not really based on certain intellectual conclusions or moral principles. The base conclusion here is that if no one knows who I am it is not me, hence anything is permissible.
In this sense the Internet is a city of chaos where child abusers, pimps etc try to invade inappropriately places like art galleries and citizens’ homes in order to push for their business. These citizens lack common sense and don’t evaluate their results either, so they are locked in a repetitive pattern of behaviour.
Although in this city anyone can express their opinion and it is a good place to find information that is not made available by one’s local media, it is not really a democratic city.
It is a wonderful roaming place for the plagiarists and an altar of annihilation for the originals.
So I come to conclude that only those citizens who are already well known and can build a castle with a large guard to defend them could remain unharmed.
That is of course if they are originals. But unfortunately many who have castles try to spot the originals and exploit them in order to keep their castles.
The task for the youth is to learn to recognise the original, not only for the sake of democracy, but mainly because only in recognising originality we can feed and explore our own originality.
P.S. In the last seven days I have learned that when the UK media starts to call every other person a genius, is not really because they are genuinely praising that person.
How shall I put it without seeming arrogant? Well Frank Ness being my only friend I won’t worry about seeming and will only convey my perception to you.
It is like them saying: Look we have got so many genii in the UK YOU are not special at all.
Well folks you only needed to come and ask me if I consider myself a genius and my answer would be: not at all.
But I know I am an original, and you could not come and ask me, simply because you are fakes. tamaam.
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* The difference in the meaning of the words ‘town’ and ‘city’ in the English language is that when a town has a cathedral it is called a city.
Hence a city can be large as well as small e.g. Winchester, just as a town can be small or large e.g. Shiraz.
** Obviously tricky choice of word to make it sink in your consciousness that you can actually sit watching the compubox for hours while getting fit as well.
Nowadays there is a keep_fit button pushing and jumping software.
But thank heaven children who are allowed to have outdoor activities don’t seem to remain interested in them for more than a few days anyway. Fancy jumping up and down in a room full of positive ions created by the computer. At least open that window mate! You are sweating in the wrong places.