Stream of Consciousness

Sometimes I play a game I invented on Wikipedia. I click on the random page button until I get to an interesting article, and from there, I see how few links I can follow to get to something I know and/or care about. Playing last night, I did the best ever. See if you can do it.From an article on fire-breathing, I made it to Firefly, which is pretty much the best canceled space western where people cuss in Chinese ever made. Since then, I've been watching the DVDs almost nonstop. I even considered changing my Halloween costume to Kaylie, the mechanic, but everything I try on makes me look like I'm dressed as my Japanese teacher, Patrick, who's a Buddhist priest. (I found this the other day that made me think of him. Check it out. It made me laugh, at least.) Anyway, wiki-surfing is buckets of fun. The thing is, you never realize how interconnected things are until you actually trace the connections. It just reinforces the smallness of the world we live in. If the links between people were tracable, one would probably be shocked at who you ended up at.

The internet is insane. Here, in this tiny white plastic rectangle, I have access to virtually any information I could possibly want, and some I really truly don't. Had anyone had such a plethora of knowledge available to them a few hundred years ago, I firmly believe they'd have been burned at the stake as witches. If you'd shown my laptop to someone from 1706, for example, they would have sworn the Devil was involved. It's just funny how our cultural perspective has changed since then. It makes one wonder what we'd think about someone from 2306. In the big picture, 300 years one way or the other isn't that long a time. Heck, even in the past 40 years, a lot has changed as far as technology is concerned. The difference between 1000 BC and 960 BC was virtually nothing, comparitively. The speed of communication is accelerating. The domestication of horses, the telegraph, the telephone, the cell phone. Increasly frequently, the speed at which information travels between people shrinks exponentially. At this rate, someone from the future come back to visit on a field trip could even seem telepathic to us.

I came across this scrap of dialogue in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest the other day, and I think it perfectly embodies my thoughts on why I write this blog.

Algernon: Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Cecily: Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.