i tend to take for granted that all rational people [with access] love the Internet. that they understand it's inherent appeal.
but then, every once in a while, a friend self-deprecatingly refers to themselves as a 'luddite', suggesting that they're somehow immune to the charms of the web.
rather than question their ambivalence, i'll take a moment to explain my passion for the online world. it hinges strongly on what sucks about adults and what rocks about kids.
if you have a senior citizen, philosopher or deity around, ask them
for some fundamental truths about youth and aging, and eventually
they'll say some of the following: that youth is fleeting and it's
freedoms are to be cherished. that life tends to follow an arc from
the simple to the complex and, eventually, back to the simple. that
somewhere along the way, our experiences have the potential to harden
us to the world and that the challenges and realities of these
experiences make us more cautious and less inclined to ask questions
and take risks.
most of my favourite people understand these truths implicitly. most of my favourite people, to borrow from dylan thomas, instinctively rage against they dying of the light [of their youththful exuberance]. they're allergic to life's drive towards
the complex.
i had lunch with one such person, a close friend, last week. he's slightly less close of late, because he now has a 2 year-old son. it's ok - i wouldn't have time for me either, if i were
him. over tasty barbecued chicken, he shared one of the more common insights
about new parenthood - that everything old becomes new again. if
you don't know any kids and are deliriously into your hip, adult life, this might seem a bit tedious - but i
believe it's at the root of why we find babies so insanely captivating. when sleeping, they reek of untarnished possibility. and when
they wake you can see them struggle earnestly to make sense of the
world around them. of course, this can lead you to ask the same questions
about your own world which, for the unprepared, can be an
unsettling process.
when kids are around, the banal becomes wondrous. fingers and toes,
snow, letters, cardboard boxes, apple cores, tires, clouds, insects,
hair, puppets, colours, wind - everything. they are the personification of relentless imagination and curiosity. instead of hammering that point into the ground, i'll suggest that
you watch Begin Here, a video from the archives of the inspiring Daniel Liss. [i wonder what his daughter is drawing lately?]
anyway. this post isn't meant to convince people to go out and get knocked up. personally, i'm not close to having kids [much to my mother's chagrin]. i'm just saying that i love the Internet because it's a giant playground for the
born-again curious. my favourite parts of it somehow help people
to learn, imagine, experiment, create, express and share. essentially, they make
us feel like kids again.
it's why i love sites like, say, How Stuff Works. or videos like 12 Verses in Water [above] from NY video art collective Squigglebooth [which actually prompted this ruminatary post in the first place] and Between You and Me one from NY filmmaker Patryk Rebisz. or so many other parts of the social web [a term i place far greater value in than the problematic web 2.0]. projects like the Box Doodle Project and Post Secret also come to mind. as do the places that simply give you a place to put your offline creative work, like YouTube.
increasingly, we get our banal through the Internet too. but for now, it's a hotbed of the weird and colourful. so instead of watching CSI tonight, get in touch with your inner, online, kid [in the non-Mark-Foley kind of way]. go pull someone's e-pigtails and eat some digital glue.