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Transmetropolitan warps my brain
But in good ways, sometimes. I was out walking around today, just on grass barefoot because I could, and had a thought that I turned into a little I dunno, story thingie. It's still rough draft, but when it's done, I'll probably post it publicly, with the CC noncommercial/attribution license, so people can post it, if they feel so inclined.
Oh, and I found a couple "Rock Against Bush" CDs at Borders, which were actually priced reasonably, as well as just amusing as hell to me, so I had to pick them up.
The Internet is a city.
It's possibly the biggest damn city in the world. A wired reflection of the whole world as one giant city, maybe. Foreign quarters, people's homes, neighborhoods, shopping, and the world's biggest red light district. A city.
People live here. People are born on webcams. People die, suddenly silent everywhere they'd been, leaving their friends without knowing. People are reborn, deciding who they want to be today. People fall in love with someone they've barely met and known for years. People fight, jovially as friends, bitterly as lovers, irrationally as fanatics. People talk, share their interests, make friends that will last years or only hours. Lovers trade explicit dreams, drunks share one night stands they'll barely remember in the morning. People do the things people do. Slightly differently and yet the same.
Like any city, mostly what it's built on is itself. You can see remnants of it everywhere, ancient webpages lost to link rot, like tiny crumbling rooms buried under the shiny new facades of corporate websites. Ideas and memes so widespread they're forgotten, worked into every chink of the foundation now. Images so old nobody knows where they started, but everybody knows them. Old pixels erased and built over for new websites. Do you know what was there before you built your webpage? Cast off and forgotten bits of the past lie everywhere. Somebody's first Geocities webpage, built back in '96 to show pictures of their cats. It hasn't been updated since April, 1997, but it's still there. Old debates on forums long lost, ideas that helped shape the Internet back before you even knew about it. What do you know about the past of our city?
There's a lot of commuters in our city. People who come in just to shop. Just to visit our museums, our arcades, our porn theaters. They don't even see the city, they don't have to. They can skip the slums, the neighborhoods, the public forums, and jump straight to what they want. The permanently smiling ubermall of Amazon, the chaotic bazaars of P2P, trading music, movies, stories, ideas, and those naked pics you took of your ex-girlfriend. Private protected chats with their friends, in rooms furbished with primary colored cartoon icons. Straight to the theater showing their private kink to whatever percent shares their carnal desires. They don't see the city, because they don't have to. They miss all the interesting little curlicues and byways, shunted along by the minimalist and ever-helpful tour guides of Google. They stay where it's safe, the main roads plastered in the gaudy circus colors of ads.
There's more to our city than just flashing monkey. Tiny close-knit neighborhoods of friends who've known each other for years. Open stages, full of actors, some who stay for years, others for minutes. Crazy guys on the street corner flogging their private visions of reality. Dreamers and mystics poking for truth out in space, inside themselves, amongst the electrons of our city, and ultimately between everyone. Artists scrawling on the canvas of the city, artistic shouts of "I am here!" into infinity, while all the while thousands of others do the same, creating cacophonous galleries of their visions. Politics in the background, parties fighting for power in the city, in the rest of the world, demagogues using blogs to launch their broadsides, others trying to make us free or hold us back. Quiet cries of desperation and loneliness from the lost and lonely and hopeless. Perky little houses reflecting the bits of people's lives they want to share, their pets, their hobbies, the things that help them through the day. It's all out there, just like a regular city. All you have to do is look and ask.
Some see the city as a prize, something to be conquered. Or a threat, needing to be silenced. A dream, a little bit of the future stolen and brought back to us now. Creeping corrupting ooze, pumping filth into people worldwide. A stage on which to be a star. A frontier, waiting to be tamed. A home where they can really be them. What you get is what you put in. It's all of these, like any city.
There's many people in our city now. People have flocked to the promises and potentials and adventure, newbies and old-school, we're all here together. Everyone brings their idea of what the city should be. Some just don't understand it, want it to be what they think it should be. Don't understand the history and what the city was. We have to fight to keep our city, keep it recognizable. Keep it somewhere we'd want to live. There isn't some murky "they", there's only us. All of us. There's nothing new here, there's only us. Look out at your city, and do something about it. If we let the city turn into something we hate, we've got nobody to blame. Except us.
The Internet is a city. It has penthouses and slums, parks, forums, malls, and homes. If you're reading this, you're already here. Welcome to my city. I live here. And so do you.
Oh, and I found a couple "Rock Against Bush" CDs at Borders, which were actually priced reasonably, as well as just amusing as hell to me, so I had to pick them up.
The Internet is a city.
It's possibly the biggest damn city in the world. A wired reflection of the whole world as one giant city, maybe. Foreign quarters, people's homes, neighborhoods, shopping, and the world's biggest red light district. A city.
People live here. People are born on webcams. People die, suddenly silent everywhere they'd been, leaving their friends without knowing. People are reborn, deciding who they want to be today. People fall in love with someone they've barely met and known for years. People fight, jovially as friends, bitterly as lovers, irrationally as fanatics. People talk, share their interests, make friends that will last years or only hours. Lovers trade explicit dreams, drunks share one night stands they'll barely remember in the morning. People do the things people do. Slightly differently and yet the same.
Like any city, mostly what it's built on is itself. You can see remnants of it everywhere, ancient webpages lost to link rot, like tiny crumbling rooms buried under the shiny new facades of corporate websites. Ideas and memes so widespread they're forgotten, worked into every chink of the foundation now. Images so old nobody knows where they started, but everybody knows them. Old pixels erased and built over for new websites. Do you know what was there before you built your webpage? Cast off and forgotten bits of the past lie everywhere. Somebody's first Geocities webpage, built back in '96 to show pictures of their cats. It hasn't been updated since April, 1997, but it's still there. Old debates on forums long lost, ideas that helped shape the Internet back before you even knew about it. What do you know about the past of our city?
There's a lot of commuters in our city. People who come in just to shop. Just to visit our museums, our arcades, our porn theaters. They don't even see the city, they don't have to. They can skip the slums, the neighborhoods, the public forums, and jump straight to what they want. The permanently smiling ubermall of Amazon, the chaotic bazaars of P2P, trading music, movies, stories, ideas, and those naked pics you took of your ex-girlfriend. Private protected chats with their friends, in rooms furbished with primary colored cartoon icons. Straight to the theater showing their private kink to whatever percent shares their carnal desires. They don't see the city, because they don't have to. They miss all the interesting little curlicues and byways, shunted along by the minimalist and ever-helpful tour guides of Google. They stay where it's safe, the main roads plastered in the gaudy circus colors of ads.
There's more to our city than just flashing monkey. Tiny close-knit neighborhoods of friends who've known each other for years. Open stages, full of actors, some who stay for years, others for minutes. Crazy guys on the street corner flogging their private visions of reality. Dreamers and mystics poking for truth out in space, inside themselves, amongst the electrons of our city, and ultimately between everyone. Artists scrawling on the canvas of the city, artistic shouts of "I am here!" into infinity, while all the while thousands of others do the same, creating cacophonous galleries of their visions. Politics in the background, parties fighting for power in the city, in the rest of the world, demagogues using blogs to launch their broadsides, others trying to make us free or hold us back. Quiet cries of desperation and loneliness from the lost and lonely and hopeless. Perky little houses reflecting the bits of people's lives they want to share, their pets, their hobbies, the things that help them through the day. It's all out there, just like a regular city. All you have to do is look and ask.
Some see the city as a prize, something to be conquered. Or a threat, needing to be silenced. A dream, a little bit of the future stolen and brought back to us now. Creeping corrupting ooze, pumping filth into people worldwide. A stage on which to be a star. A frontier, waiting to be tamed. A home where they can really be them. What you get is what you put in. It's all of these, like any city.
There's many people in our city now. People have flocked to the promises and potentials and adventure, newbies and old-school, we're all here together. Everyone brings their idea of what the city should be. Some just don't understand it, want it to be what they think it should be. Don't understand the history and what the city was. We have to fight to keep our city, keep it recognizable. Keep it somewhere we'd want to live. There isn't some murky "they", there's only us. All of us. There's nothing new here, there's only us. Look out at your city, and do something about it. If we let the city turn into something we hate, we've got nobody to blame. Except us.
The Internet is a city. It has penthouses and slums, parks, forums, malls, and homes. If you're reading this, you're already here. Welcome to my city. I live here. And so do you.