realize
october 26, 1996


My friends tell me that too much of my time is spent on the computer. Well, actually, that's not the complaint. The complaint is that I spend way too much time playing on the web. It's true. I do spend an obscene amount of time on my computer playing on the web. And why? I've been asking myself this question for a while.

After all, it's not like there's much interesting stuff out there. Oh, sure, free email addresses, lot's of porn (or so i've heard), tons and tons of "this is my homepage... here is my cat" pages. A whole lot of crap. So what is so facinating about it to me?

I don't know.

Perhaps it's the every changing quality of the web. The fact that everyday you can find something new. That pages are continually under construction. Well, perhaps. The thing that I have found, however, is that unless you find an "online journal" or something similar (hrm), then there's really no point in looking at someone's personal page more than once. Chances are that you're going to go back and find a note to the effect of "I haven't changed this page in xx days because I've been too busy. deal." or something similar.

So that couldn't be it.

There's also an abundance of news type stuffs on the web. There might actually be an overabundance, because there is absolutely no way that anyone cares enough about anything to read all the stuff that's out there. Most of it is crap anyway.

So, now, where am I?

Maybe it's compensation for the little interaction I do anyway. If I can find out a little more about a person from their web page, then I feel that I've made a friend. No, wait. That's really sad. That can't be it. Or maybe it is. I know that I'm constantly looking for ideas for my web page. I seem to feel that if people are looking at my web pages, that if they're listening to what I have to say (which is pretty impressive as I'm pretty soft spoken person in real life), then I've made an impact on their life. Which means that I've made a change for someone. Which means that I'm alive.

Well, in some strange, convoluted way.

I surf, therefore I am? Blech.


jcn@brown.edu


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