The internet.

The dragon eggs are starting to crack. :)

Today I want to talk briefly about the internet. It gets a bad rep from time to time. The newspapers take every opportunity to make it seem like Facebook is full of paedophiles and, presumably, children. Unproficient users fear the dreaded 'virus' that can make their computer melt while simultaneously being the ones who forward endless amounts of spam to their friends on the basis of it being 'funny' or warning about spam. The irony. They're also the ones who tend to go hunting for antivirus software from less than reputable sources and in doing so, contract viruses.

But the internet is really a magical and wonderful place. Ok sure, there's B. But if you avoid B then it's a magical and wonderful place. Without the internet I likely wouldn't have friends in America, Canada, Holland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Egypt, New Zealand and Australia and probably more places that I've forgotten. In fact I probably wouldn't know any of you.
Without the internet I wouldn't be able to order incredibly rare CDs from places such as Germany and Austria (thank you Amazon for making that possible).
Without the internet I wouldn't have the wealth of knowledge (accurate or otherwise) that places such as Wikipedia and IMDB provide. I *could* always go to the library and waste hours and hours looking stuff up. Or I could just type "Mongolian History into Wikipedia and discover in an instant that the Mongolian Empire was founded by Chinggis Khaan in 1206. I *could* go to Blockbuster video and look on the back of every film until I find one with Jason Statham in... or I could just type his name into IMDB and be presented with a chronological list of his every appearance.
Without the internet, the only contact I have with my folks in Greece is a voice conversation over the phone that costs more than it would to visit them. With the internet a live video chat is just a click away and free, thanks to Microsoft.
Without the internet, I'd still be stuck in musical limbo, listening to the same old CDs I've always known, waiting for a friend to play me a song to see if I like the band. With the internet Pandora (now US only) and Last.fm allow me to listen to music I've never heard before, based on the type of music I already like allowing me to broaden my musical horizons beyond my wildest dreams. the internet is literally the world at my fingertips and yes, that means both the good and the bad. It still has its fair share of racism and intolerance, ignorance and simple incorrectness, but no more than the real world. The 38'000 idiots who joined the Raoul Moat Facebook tribute page would still exist and still share that opinion whether the internet existed or not. Those same paedophiles would still be out prowling for children in a more traditional fashion. The internet has not made the world a worse place. Some might argue that it hasn't really made it any better. But it's certainly made it a lot easier, whether you're using it to stalk your next murder victim or simply to send a birthday gift to a foreign friend.
I think it's high time people stopped giving the internet a bad name or taking it for granted and respect it for the tool that it is. A hammer can be used to build or destroy (or even kill) but no one moans about how much nicer the world was before hammers!

So today I want you to think about all the good the internet has brought into your life. All the great things it's done for you. All the ways in which it has made your world better. Today is Love the Internet day.