“I’m going to tell you something that you aren’t going to want to hear,” he said. “The world is at its end. It’s going to destruct itself and I’m going to tell you why.” He leaned way far over the counter, a stern scowl upon his face. Admittedly, I felt a little anxious. Here’s this guy—an elderly man, a war vet, NRA badges and fishing lures decorating his vest, about to tell me some ancient secret. “The internet,” he began, “is closing in and closing down and soon we will all be dead because of it.” Whew! Was that a relief. Here I was imagining global catastrophe, cataclysmic manslaughter, end times for real. But this guy was just one of many seniors, terrified by the big old World Wide Web. I think I smirked. Actually I know I did, because he snapped his face back into mine and spit a little, exclaiming, “Don’t you look at me like that!”
    
    Seriously? I don’t know this guy. I was simply working, attempting to explain his upcoming dental treatment to him, and he happened to see my iPhone falling out of my scrub pocket. He asked what it was, so I politely explained its meaning, its features, etc. He pulled out his Zach Morris replica jitterbug thing and explained his niece bought it for him and he hates its guts. For whatever reason, this mini-conversation turned into his explanation of the ruin of all good. I guess I can understand. I mean, the internet kind of took everybody by storm. One minute we played Tetris on a SEGA, the next we were streaming movies onto our iPads at two-second download speeds. I thought about the conversation with him later, as I usually do with people I have a glimpse of each day. I thought of his certainty and his anger and of all the things he had to get used to during his years on our planet, and I guess I felt bad. To him the internet is a horrible thing, an evil demented mastermind, out to get us all. Yet the rest of us use it so absentmindedly, so rountinely, it kind of is absurd.

    In the beginning for me, the internet was a tool used for school information and emailing my friends. Now I use it for everything. Banking, bill pay, keeping up with the news, keeping track of my kids, my schedule, my calorie counter, music, movies, pictures, and most all of my communication with people I know. My phone is on me constantly—I’m always plugged in. If you stop and think about it, even for just a second, do any of you do much different? What would truly happen to us if the unthinkable did happen? Say a solar storm hits earth and our power grid is knocked out. What the hell would we do? We rely on this nameless “thing” almost more than the basics: our food, water, and clean air. I’d be the first one to flip out if my internet was off, yet our water lines have been down before and it was like, “Yah, this sucks.”

    As much as I love my phone and love being online, if you really think about it, how much are we hurting ourselves with this thing we use so much? Facebook is pretty much the only aspect of the internet I refuse to be a part of, and funny enough it’s probably the most popular thing out there. (We can be honest—for those 5 people who REALLY know me, you know if I had Faceook I would be murdered, or in jail, or unemployed, or all of the above.) But Facebook, as cool as the idea is, scares me. How easy to post an idea of the moment, at the wrong moment, and never be able to take it back again. This is also becoming a widely used tool by employers to find out about activities of employees. How can you fuck yourself more than that? Or the legality issues. Just a few weeks ago, a man was jailed on bigamy charges because wife number one accidentally friend-ed wife number 2 and they realized how similar the pictures of their respective hubbies looked. Idiot! How many senators have to post naked pics of themselves online and send them to their mistresses, how many silly little teenage girls have to try to impress some pimply-faced boy by posting immodest pics of themselves, before any of us learn that less may just be more (and best) when it comes to Facebook?

    As a mama, there are even more parts to the abilities of the internet that scare me. It’s not about whether my kids are responsible and trustworthy. It’s not about what I allow them to do. Today’s online functions are too tempting, dangerous, and seriously dirty. My daughter was looking on YouTube the other day for some new Justin Beiber video, and I happened to be sitting next to her. She found the video and that was great, but on the sidebar next to it was some caption that said, “If you like this video, maybe you should try...” followed by other video links you could click on. Some were pretty much porn. “Crazy college girls talk about sex.” Really?? Google is another thing you have to watch out for. Never Google anything like Spanx, trying to find the underwear, and think that’s what’s going to pop up. Also, never, ever try to Google reasons for why your male dog seems to be in heat. Ever. It kind of seems like the internet itself is dirty because I swear anytime I Google something, I always get at least one option that is totally perverted.

    I don’t ever want to be as paranoid as the man at my work that day about the internet. But I do think there is something to be said for respect and possibly a little fear to its capabilities. Truly, can any of us explain what the internet actually is? How it does what it does? Something as big as this deserves a little knowledge and a little understanding, and I think with all of its glamour the general population tends to be somewhat naive about what it is we are really dealing with. The last thing we want to be is puppets on some unknown string. I love the internet, don’t get me wrong, I just think we need to be careful. WWW offers a lot of good, but as we all have come to see, a lot of stuff you can never take back, too.