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The Internet?
(cue dramatic music)
The internet is all around us. This is, indeed, a good chunk of its power. Because the internet is everywhere (in our phones, streetlights, and microwaves), it helps to make our modern world go.
But all that ubiquity does have a bit of a drawback. You just assume you'll always have it. The internet, like a good sandwich, is easy to take for granted.
And too often we take note of something only after it's gone. It's only when we're served a cold, damp puddle of mushy bread and smelly pickles, that we begin to appreciate just how good a sandwich can be. Ditto the internet. Because of our reliance on its magic powers, losing the internet for even 30 minutes can feel like the apocalypse.
Now this isn't necessarily a terrible thing—but it is a little unfortunate. Just because we experience a lot of something, doesn't mean we shouldn't stop to give it some love. A really great meatball sub, for example, deserves to be savoured every single time.
Or maybe I'm just hungry. But still, it's important to take note. Because like that meatball sub, the internet is an incredible testament to the power of human achievement.
To whit: the greatest collection of human knowledge in the ancient world was The Library of Alexandria. The library was a mythical place. According to contemporary accounts, the cavernous buildings contained close to 500,000 scrolls. For all intents and purposes, it was the physical embodiment of all knowledge at the time.
But compared to the information we have access to every day, through the internet, that great library was like a text-only website from 1996.
Today, there's a billion spam-emails alone sent every minute. Wikipedia (the closest thing to a modern Alexandrian library) publishes 600 edits every 60 seconds. The internet is already the deepest collection of human wisdom (and terrible memes... and ridiculous photos) the world has ever seen—and it's only getting bigger. Only time will tell what it will become.
Here's hoping it's incredible.
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