Among the lists of endemic species facing extinction such as many species of dendrobates, poison dart frog, print is not one such thing.

Print is not facing losses due to human demand, pollution or  global warming. The only thing contributing to print decline is the internet which produces information that should only be trusted as far as you can throw it.

Print is comfortable. It is neverending. And it is trustworthy.

Print is akin to species of humanized mammals, a species which will never go extinct as long as we need the comfort and love of that which will always be there and on our side.

Print will survive in this changing economy, it will adapt. Print is eternal, it will be around forever.

I had a thought as I was pouring concentrated hydrochloric acid into my 50 mL beaker during chemistry lab. Mind you, having a thought other than “Please dear God, don’t let me spill this highly corrosive acid on my skin,” is not a very safe thing to happen during a chemistry lab filled with expensive glassware, corrosive acids and highly reactive solutions.

Nevertheless, I had a thought.

It’s baffling how pouring acid into my responsive solution can lead me to ponder the existence of the real world, but it did.

With thousands of people logging on, searching, surfing and more or less believing the information on the web, what in this world is real if it is not there?

Tim Berner’s Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web proposed this same idea  when describing and promoting his invention. “If it isn’t on the Web, it doesn’t exist,” he said.

Well he was wrong.

if it’s on the web, it’s fake. it’s fantasy. nobody trusts what is written. the web dehumanizes people. It’s the age of untruths. nothing on the internet is valid.

watch from 6min on.

Pouring very real and very dangerous chemicals into a flask in Chemistry class is real, the trees outside are real, my roommate sitting next to me on the couch, he’s real. What is put on the web might not be.

The web is a matrix of personal publishing, search engines, articles, online communities and anything a monkey with a computer with access to the internet can put up.

Who’s to say what is on the web is real. Wikipedia users post information daily that may not be truthful or accurate.

The web cannot be trusted for truthful information, therefore, it cannot be trusted to be real.

Someone’s illiterate…they learn to read.

Someone’s innumerate…they learn to understand numbers.

So what happens when someone is illweberate or maybe even illinterate (unable to use the web or internet), they learn.

In a world where technology is taking off and the internet is the new frontier people cannot be neophobic. Having the fear of knowledge and new things will lead to the downfall of those who do not embrace the new world.
Image: The New World
In Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution organisms that cannot adapt to survive and who do not have the best traits fitted for survival and reproduction are eventually faded out.
This is the same case for humans.
Although death is not impending for those who don’t embrace the web and all of its possibilities, they will still have a hard time of it growing up in a world ever-changing around them. How can one expect to live in a world that is moving on without them?
Knowledge of the web is a must have for up and comings in the world. Join the masses or be left behind. Without the understanding and ability to use the web the technological world, one that’s constantly growing, will overtake you.
It’s not about being terrified of the web and its vastness or thinking that the web is terrific, it’s about understanding that the web is the new frontier and knowledge of its uses and how to use it will save those from homelessness and hermit lifestyles in the upcoming online job market.

Gollums riddle from The Hobbit

The answer: Time.

It’s something we have little to none of.

The internet’s fast, it’s non-linear, it’s to the point, it’s always there and it’s always available, perfect for the person who has no extra second in the day to sit down and read.

We humans are like hummingbirds.

Moving

Moving

Moving

Never stopping or our hearts will explode.  This is why, we have no time.

With longer days, shorter nights and endless caffeine, it would seem that we create more time for ourselves. This is not the case.

Gone is the family time. Gone is the leisure time. Gone is the time!

With this unending quest to find more time in the day for leisure, books are no longer a commodity.  Who has time to read a full 160 page book when the two sentence synopsis is posted online?  Who has time to read the newspaper when the web bombards us with hundreds of headlines hourly?

The web is the new frontier. It is more time-efficient to glance at a headline, a synopsis, a picture or video then to sit down to read a full article or text.

The web is formatted just for those who have no time in the day to focus on one task. Reading takes effort, it takes understanding and it takes time. The internet allows you to read whenever, however and doing whatever.

The web will soon fade reading full texts out of the picture completely.

That is the single most important things modern-day journalists can learn from the online blogger. Bloggers are not afraid to write exactly what they want; they have no inhibitions.

Journalists however, are constantly keeping their writing in check so as not to offend or alienate any select member of society. This act of supreme editing creates a loftier and arrogant journalistic writing then society can accept at this time of supreme want of social interaction.

In this day and age people are searching for social interaction. What makes bloggers so successful is the ability of the average Joe to raise questions about the subject’s ideas and to interact with the blogger itself.

This is the practice that modern journalists today need to accept: voicing their opinions in the news and writings in order to warrant social interaction.

Although this interaction might not always elicit the best responses from the public, it can and will bring in more viewings and, overall, have a greater interest to members of society; whether they are appalled by the writing and want to voice their undoubtedly condescending opinion or they find the rantings of others amusing and so thus follow the story in question with all its opposing views.

The internet is fast, easy, at-your-fingertips ready, and current.

However, given the choice, would you rather trust a historical event found in a hard bound copy recorded centuries ago, or a blurb on the internet that sports the “altered today” sentence in 8mm font at the bottom.

I personally would trust the old, read by millions, copy that has been unchanged and steady as opposed to the ever-changing, easily altered by the common idiot copy on the internet.

the internet is powerful, more powerful than one may like to admit to. apart from the privacy issues, hacking issues and virus issues there is the very scary bullcrap issue.

How can one distinguish on the internet something that’s true and something that Joe Schmoe the plumber wrote?

The internet is so easily changeable and fluid. Information that used to be concretely placed in books and hard copies loses its validity when it’s written on a medium so easily hacked, altered and molded.

“I learned a very important lesson that night. People believe whatever they read. Something magical happens once its put down on paper. They figure no one would have gone through the trouble if it wasn’t the truth. Responsibility was my new watchman.”
Eugene Morris Jerome in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues

People can and will believe anything they read; scary is the thought that any idea, history or truth can be changed and then believed.

I’m a dancer.

I’m a princess.

I’m a tease.

I’m a lover.

I’m a fighter.

“I’m a little bit of everything, all rolled into one…So take me as I am.”(Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”)

Meredith Brooks knew what she was talking about when she sang her song .

The human psyche is not simple black and white. There are many shades of gray.

“Everybody’s got their something,” (Nikki Costa) and everybody wants to be acknowledged for it.

Internet communities are a prime opportunity for people in this new social networking and isolated world to find others to belong to.

In a world that’s rapidly becoming more and more technology dependant and isolated, the human populous is finding it harder and harder to find others to connect to. Internet communities provide such connections.

Charles Leadbetter on Internet Communites

-Watch from 1:20 to 2:18

We, as animals, need the comfort and security that a community brings. However, humans this day and age are increasingly more reliant on technology and less interested in synchronous communication.

So how do we find that connection to others ?

Internet communities.

There are millions upon millions of communities out there. Some as big as Facebook or Myspace in which friends can connect and some as small as reptilegeeks in which only a niche community of reptile lovers are part of, including myself.

With the help of online communities it is easier to feel connected and loved by those with similar interests, and that, my fellow humans, is something we all are looking for.

Cold War.

Black Plague.

Loss of Internet

Er…Stop. Wait a second.

Loss of the internet does not equal loss of life, limb and happiness.

DON’T FREAK OUT!

The loss of the internet will prove a shock and the world will suffer for a good while. But one thing we can rely on is that we are animals.

Animals, according to Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species, have phenotypic plasticity as a means of natural selection and adaptation.

Phenotypic plasticity in animals means that in cases of change of environment, adaptation is key and will occur.

Loss of internet would be dramatic change in today’s environment, but as a result, people will change to adapt to the shock of losing all the internet has to offer.

Business’ all over the world would suffer the most damages, but, for the normal day user, internet loss would not equal loss of life.

I still recall a time in which the internet was not a reliable source of information. Instead people would use these things called books.

As far as communication, the internet only makes it more asynchronous. I could be talking to my best friend…or an ax murdered, who knows?

As far as I remember, I wasn’t living in the dark ages when the only way to talk to a friend was to call them up and hear their melodic voice or when I had to spend ten seconds more flipping through the pages of the book marked A to find information on an alligator.

Guess what we are animals and we can and will adapt.

Although treatment of the red ant bite is simple and over the counter, when encountering a notable amount of bites, death can be impending.

The internet is like a fire ant hill. Attempt to control and conform into a social medium of conversation and individual contribution will only end in a painful amount of bullcrap that cannot be sifted through to find the truth.

Determining if an online article is a blog or a valid article is as easy as distinguishing a fire ant hill from a mound of dirt.

With deep consideration and more than a little research and knowledge of the area it can be done, but who wants to spend extra time determining if something is true on the internet.

It’s easier just to accept blind faith in the information posted then to consider it might be dangerous.

We used to be taught that typing in URL’s with .edu or .org at the end were considered truthful and valid websites for research. Now, there is a giant cyberspace full of information at the tip of the fingertips and none of it might be valid.

It is not good to step carelessly on a fire ant hill, it could be fatal. Don’t blindly accept that the mound of dirt is simply a mound of dirt, it could end in tears or misleading information.

A ringleader of a circus knows the audience does not want to hear about the unfortunate life story of the deformed man in which his mother died giving birth to him leaving him abandoned and alone and everyone cringed away from him on the streets muttering words like “freak” as he slithered by. No, they want to hear, “Come and see the man covered in scales!”

That is what journalism today is turning into. Short, dramatic phrases that capture the reader’s attention long enough to convey the important headline.

We, as a society, are multi-taskers. No longer is there time in the day to read more than a half a page of an article in a newspaper or magazine, and reading on the web, a growing and prominent medium, is near impossible unless the paragraphs are short and interrupted with amusing pictures, hyperlinks or videos.

The World Wide Web has made it possible, and prominent to post articles and ideas for everyone to see. And the easiest way to get those ideas heard, or read, is in a blog.

The Blog is the future. It is the new requirement to being a journalist in today’s online world.

So, a note to today’s upcoming journalists, it’s not about the quantity, but the quality, so shorten what you say, make it interesting and post it on the web.

Come join today’s journalism circus!