This weekend, I got annoyed with the internet. Not with slow connections or cranky servers or expired certificates. I found myself irritated -- disappointed even -- by the content. 109.5 million websites, and nothin' on.
Sufficiently bored, I found it possible to feel genuninely disappointed in the Digital Community-Entertainment Complex whose responsibility it has become to fill our every waking hour with interactivity, news, and the wisdom of Super Hans. Not just disinterested, but disappointed. Mildly betrayed. How can it be that the digital infinite is unable to fill 4 hours per week with fully indexed infotainment at no cost and requiring less effort? If I can't obliterate 25% of my waking hours on demand, what good has really come of binary code? Must I buy a television? Surely not.
My weekend descent from directionlessness and boredom to disappointment and frustration is not really about the shortcomings of the internet. It is end times. It must be. Such decadence always means end times, right? This fella in the New York Times doesn't think so, and he makes an interesting point, despite having forgotten to wash the bit of face that surrounds his mouth.
Perhaps you are searching for the connection between my infantile frustration with web surfing as a time filler and an op-ed on the implications of liberalism's permanent triumph. Well, not as hard as I am. Perhaps it's this: I, too, am afraid of decadence. I feel what laziness and entitlement produces in me when I let it run roughshod over my free time. I believe, on some fundamental level, that the same thing will inevitably happen to western society. We will indulge our personal choice ad infinitum, forgetting we ever had hobbies or causes, wasting whatever time possible and spending the rest complaining about how busy we are.
But there's no use inventing bogeymen, be they fundamentalists and terrorists or wireless networks and handheld devices. We must claim our victories as our own. That means striving for a better world because it's the right thing to do, not because there is an enemy to be defeated. On the personal front, I remembered that I like to write. So I'll start doing it here.
