How we experience the Internet in our daily lives — whether we experience it as a dehumanizing void in which e-mail replaces face-to-face interaction, or as a meaningful community in which we discover new commonalities and connections — is a choice we make every day, with every message we send or browser page we load. Those choices can add up to personal and social alienation, or personal and social transformation.
This month’s vendetta: Christmas. Why Christmas? The fact that my Christmas vendetta has to begin on November 6th should say it all. This holiday could be the poster child for scope creep. It starts out as a nice little religious holiday, sing some songs and have a big meal with your friends, and now it’s an entire season.
We can direct the Internet’s flow towards our most craven instincts (spam, porn, gambling) or towards our vision of what the world can be like (online volunteering, e-giving, digital art). Just as the soul of money, or the role of money in the world, is the product of individual decisions as well as systemic forces, the soul of the Internet can be shaped by how we individually engage with the online sphere.
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