Tangled up in the Inter Net

Looking back on being a freshman in high school six years ago, i could certainly say that internet technology has come into my life in so many different ways. In terms of school, it was not expected of students to have obtain information for research papers online. My U.S. history teacher had banned the use of the internet as a resource, and others frowned upon it. At this point in time, the internet was still seemingly unreliable as a source of information. Books and libraries were the only way of "truly" getting information for research. Physical books and literature was still framed as the only "intellectual" way of obtaining information, while the internet looked more like a virtual mall where teens could hang out, chat with their friends, and buy useless crap, and less like a reputable source of information.
Obviously today things are almost the opposite. Most professors require a certain amount of website articles or other resources when doing research, and overall, academia has embraced the internet as a tool for gaining knowledge and processing important information. Books are now in the process of being digitalized, with thousands of classics already available for download or cataloged on Google books. As we also become more globally conscious it seems that this digital book craze is also a move to limit the use of paper and loss of trees.
In terms of how the internet has positively effected my life, i would say that it is most likely connected to this recent embracing of the internet as a wealth of information. For me, if there is any thing in the world that i am slightly interested in, i can immediately check it out, google it, wiki it, and absorb everything there is to know about that specific thing online. Before the internet's wide acceptance, i would have never been able to sit down and discover so much information on topics generally not written about or published very often. Specifically i have gained a large portion of my knowledge of music, film, theater, and art from time spent gazing into the google results, gobbling up every tidbit on theater of the absurd, or fluxus art, or yugoslavian films for example. I literally take notes because i am so interested in these topics, and attempt to teach myself about things i would have never would have been able to learn on my own. I have probably hundreds of blogs bookmarked, and if i ever feel the need to aquire more information, i could spend days reading WFMU's back posts, or sifting through the albums posted on Mutant Sounds with glee. Point is, i would not know half the stuff i pride myself with knowing without the internet, and i couldn't be more thrilled that it can provide me with all that it has.
However, as much as the internet has filled my head with amazing information, i equally despise and condemn what it has done to our culture. Technologies like SMS, AIM, myspace, facebook, etc. have presented themselves as a way for people to keep in touch with each other more frequently than any form of communication in the past, when in actuality, all they do is distance us from each other while making us feel like we're connected. It's this sense of hyper-connectivity with lures people into it, and in turn creates a social atmosphere that finds most college students "txtin' der frend 'bout how borinz der prof. is", while in class. Texting and these other products of our culture's neo-communication fixation are easier for people because it's a way to remove emotion from interaction. Yes, there are "emoticons", but come on...really. As if certain words and phrases weren't worn dead by our culture's overusage already, now texted phrases like "i'm sorry" and "i love you" are even more contrived, impotent, and inhuman.
All this said, i have unlimited text messaging, an AIM account, a Facebook and a Myspace. Hmmm...contradictyourselfmuch? Well, maybe, but the main reasons why i have these things are only because in this day and age our culture has become so immersed all these new social devices that i get hounded by friends caught up in the hype, and scorned by loved ones who complain that i don't " leave them enough comments, write on there wall enough, or text them". Apprently it's a sign of affection to text your friends every 10 seconds during class, but i guess i missed that. And in return for my non-compliance, I come off as inconsiderate, cold, and apathetic towards my friends and loved ones. At this point, i'm just trying to survive in a social world so caught up in their hyper-connectivity that they don't realize that they're actually isolating thmselves.