Although we created it, we did not exactly design it. It evolved. Our relationship to it is similar to our relationship to our biological ecosystem. We are codependent and not entirely in control…We are now all connected, humans and machines. Welcome to the dawn of the Entanglement.” (W. Daniel Hillis 251)
This quote resonates with me since our generation is absolutely codependent on the internet and all that it offers; it is as omnipotent in our society and we affect it just as much as it affects us; this give and take, the “entanglement” as Daniel Hillis calls it, has vastly changed our world and how we interact with it.
My family was pretty slow to adopt the internet, so I vividly remember the days before the internet. I spent most of my free time outdoors exploring my neighborhood and local environment, I stayed in contact with my friends predominantly through face-to-face interactions or through our mothers over the phone. My family was fairly strict about internet access, so I didn’t really think much of it until late elementary school.
It was around that time that I was provided internet access at school, and my classmates would all plan to get on the school-sanctioned chat group at the same time so we could chat at home. I remember thinking we were extremely high-tech (none of us had cell phones at this point) and mature for being able to communicate without parents or being in school. Soon we all had phones and textual communication dominated our lives outside of being around each other; that’s when the internet took over research beyond books and we were totally consumed by the point of high school.
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