where are we?

i can watch youtube now, but tv is more fun. somehow it retains a certain innocence i find lacking from the internet.
ok, tv is as corrupt and manipulative as maybe anything that has ever been, and that is human. but, tv was something utterly new. well, radio was something utterly new and tv was like offspring or spouse. i mean, radio and tv changed the rules of entertainment, shrank the world (metaphysically and physically), etc... radio and tv put the world into a box, allowed for the muscles in the neck to lock into one place*, allowed the muscles in the brain to lock onto one object, sight and stimulation emanate from the single source etc... there were rules and someone is in charge and some people look like tv or some bands sound like radio and somehow everyone knew what was tv-able or not. what i mean is that tv was simple, entertainment, self-contained, self-sufficient...
the internet, i dont know about the internet.
in burroughs' city of the red night, the rule of first city is: everything is true and nothing is permitted. the rule of the last city (there are seven): nothing is true and everything is permitted.
what i dont like about the internet is that it never shuts off. i have an email address, i cant get my own apartment, but i can get a free internet mailing address, lots of 'em. the internet is the new real world. i have to get on the internet to get a job now. i have to get on the internet to see how much money i have. i dont know if i am ready, but of course there is no time for hesitation. i wonder if the internet will ever be taxed, if the availability of addresses and sites and virtual space is finite. is anything infinite? could something become finite or wouldnt it have to have been infinite forever, no beginning no end. something created can be destroyed, and before it is destroyed it can be bought and sold.
did someone create the internet or did we find it flowing like a river under a patch of the tangible world....
this is what makes me hesitate. i guess i dont mind the internet if it is infinite. is life nothing but a quest for entertainment?
i definitely think the internet is a poor substitute for telepathy.
oh wait, as i remember math class, something can start at a point and move on to infinity. but i think it has to move in the opposite direction in equal fashion. is this a parabola?
so, we can create the internet, the infinite; but what we gain in access to information, we lose in ability to ask questions? what we gain in access to collective consciousness, we lose in actual attention spans. what we gain in convenience, we lose in skill. what we gain in communication, we lose in trust. that is the killer to me.
i'm tired of communicating with people who dont trust me.
in summary, this is why i said tv is more innocent, because i can trust it. i can trust it to be corrupt, and deal with that. or i can trust that it just wants to entertain me, and i can turn it off when i want to.maybe the internet is just young, maybe we will settle on rules together or escape from all the rules and expectations, maybe the internet will make more sense in a slightly altered society, one with different goals than what we have now. in that sense, maybe the internet is the altruistic wizard of oz, or worse than caligula. i dunno, it's more aggressive than tv is all i'm sayin.
*i put the asterisk next to the part about neck muscles cuz i forgot how stiff my neck gets when i read a book all night. to that i would say radio and tv was a new literacy and the internet is certainly a new literacy. and i dont just mean peopel who cant spel oR wHo SeEm to LikE caPitLiZinG oNly CerTaiN letTeRs, but that is really important too. the internet is a book writing itself and there seems to be no polite way to decline one's own inclusion.

well, about the virtual life the internet leads, about this virtual camel we have all come to ride or walk alongside of or avoid like the plague, it asks direct questions, it makes direct links. tv is more like detective work, tv is just more work. the internet says things like, "people who bought mc hammer please hammer dont hurt 'em also bought dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince parents just dont understand" or "other videos containing 'crusty bellybutton sprinkle' are...". maybe the internet knows we are still sucking our thumbs at this point in digital existence, it needs to talk... real... slow. or maybe the internet isnt virtually alive and we are really getting dumb. but i think we are just in an infant stage of some kind.
in many ways, things have sped up from, say 1950 or 1850 or 1750, people on tv say information doubles everyday. but if we are getting dumb, what good is it? if we are actually in an infant stage, as humanity, it would make sense that information would double everyday, just as it does for a child. this is not new information that didnt exist before, this is just a new wrinkle in the brain. everyday, someone learns that 2 is after 1 and h is after g, of course, they have been that way for quite sometime, but it remains mysterious to anyone who has never encountered the alphabet.
people in 1950, 1850, 1750, 1650, 5000bc, i'm pretty sure humans grow at the same rate. i'm pretty sure it has been a while and will be a while yet when a person is full grown at age 7 or not until age 53. i mean 18 year olds have been roughly the same size for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. i think people have probably even learned new things the same way for this long. only the world has changed. although we have changed the world, humans have changed the world, i feel like the world has changed itself so much more. so much more that our changes are miniscule; maybe, the mass of humanity compared to the mass of the planet. since a time when humans have been similar to one another.

and to that i would say that maybe we are becoming dissimilar to one another, which would mark the beginning of the end of humanity and the transition to something else. but i really dont think we are becoming dissimilar. i think a real artificial telepathy is in utero. one without the advantage of trust, substituting, uh... i dont know what, for trust... money? money is universal, something universal, something completely devoid of coincidence.
i could see the place becoming split between trusters and... and... the faithless (but one doesnt need faith when no room is left for chance). but the thing is, nothing would change, not really, only the faces behind the mask, which arent seen anyway...
whereas now we have some rich people but then we have old money. old money runs the world. rich people aint shit. really! poor people are better off than rich people except that poor people dont love with their hearts, somehow, people have learned to love with their memory, and happiness is one groove of a skipping record.
old money owns record players, old money is the dj. old money is like 10% of the population. old money is the dj, i mean, the dj knows which grooves on the record are happy or sad, the dj knows the record, the dj decides which grooves to play when and why.

in a world of infinite information, artificial telepathy, people who can trust would be like old money. people who retain their ability to make decisions based on their truest self, to trust whatever is left of whatever we started with... are creating the ripples felt by everyone else.
(this is happening now, this is current reality, but all realities occur simultaneously, perceivable to the degree that you invite the distraction.)
the mask is not a disguise old money wears to deceive but the condition of blindness on the part of the viewer, blindness caused by looking with the wrong part of the body, looking with the memory in the past when the face is in the present. like looking at stars that have died a billion years ago whose light is just reaching us (that being said, is it mathematically improbable that we, someone, would see at least one star blink out of the sky in a lifetime?)
a dj is a dj, and a dj spins records. i think i have a different definition of evil than some folks. i think evil is a certain record, i dont think the dj is evil, but the dj knows which record is the evil one, and the dj who plays the evil record wont be at my birthday party. but i might pop in to that club for kicks once. i bet they wear crazy costumes in there! i bet their dances are something else.

as for people becoming dissimilar, humanity moving on, this would happen when people would see with their eyes and not their memory. this would happen when people would remember with their memories and not their eyes. this would happen when everyone is true to themself, they would see that you are not the same as me, but i mean you no harm, i just want to be true to my self, the same as you. in that, we are all moving individually but passing through one another in a way i cant describe. if a carrot and an apple could be put in a blender and turned into one juice, but then seperated back into a whole apple and a whole carrot again...
love is a mingling of ingredients, hate is two items not touching at any point, which i imagine would be a lot of work to achieve, if time and circumstance, cause and effect were seen with the eyes and not with the memory, though the touch would be weak, it would be undeniable and hate would be impossible in that case, although still acheivable with some manipulation to perception. some wipeout of some bridge back to somewhere, a break in the infinity...
love is not good and hate is not bad, love is and so is hate, but love is first and hate is second. love is what is happening until we decide to hate.

in love, humanity would have to reconsider itself...