Everyone loves to point out how the World Wide Web has connected us around the globe. One can say that this is true, but one can also say it has also separated us in new and damaging ways. The web has given us more reasons to impose even stricter austerity within our community, schools, and churches—-all of the places that have historically brought us together. Sure the World Wide Web has connected us to people around the world we may not have crossed paths with in the past, but it has found new damaging ways to leave us alone and create a web of apartness where it is painful to even be around other human beings.
If you are over 40 years of age, close your eyes. Do you feel more connected than before the Internet? I don’t. I have definitely leveraged the web to establish a global audience of friends and readers who make my world go round. I definitely feel like I am more connected at a global level than I was before the Internet, but I also feel like there is a local home, family, and community toll that we’ve all experienced. There isn’t anything really stopping us, we’ve just slowly opted not to, in favor of isolation and clicking on screens. The forward motion of the Internet has taken us out of our communities, and left us in isolation.
I feel all of the local community nutrients are being extracted and mined, and virtual siloes are being established to keep us apart. We literally can live in the same city block and never see each other except maybe via Facebook or Instagram. We can walk through the same park and only know it because we saw each other’s pictures of the trees on Instagram. We can eat at the same restaurants and never actually connect except maybe comments on the pictures of what we ate. At first the World Wide Web seemed like it opened up new doors and connected us globally, but in exchange we have closed existing doors that were essential to our personal and professional lives, and connected us as human beings.
What have we traded? Has anyone done an accounting for what the World Wide Web has given, as well as what it has taken away? Did we spin the web? Or was the web used to entrap us? I connect with someone in Europe as I ignore someone in my neighborhood. What is it like to have grown up in this and spent your life on this web? I miss you all. The World Wide Web demands our participation at the global level, but at the expense of our physical togetherness. The Internet demands our attention when our children need our love. The Internet has become a surrogate for our children, our friends, our families, and our communities. Being together took work and practice and commitment. I am afraid we are losing all of that for a World Wide Web of apartness.
