The greatest explanation
Speaking of old people, I was wandering around Stansted this weekend and passed a few of the large, slightly Fountainhead internet kiosks that grow out of airport carpets from Hoboken to Hong Kong. Staring at one of them, I had a mini-piphany. This is what old people think the internet is.
I feel like in the minds of people who missed out on the progression through word processing, joysticks, DOS, the mouse, Wolfenstein 3D, Windows and YouTube, the internet is, like, a thing that you buy, like a refrigerator or a garage-door opener or a giant wood-paneled TV. I have no idea if this is remotely true, but it just seems to me that the kind of person who has been dismissing the personal computer for the last 15 years (Gore Vidal comes instantly to mind) would have trouble making the leap to a new paradigm of what this magical qwertical machine does.
So when politicians talk about the internet, imagine them imagining the internet as a winged kiosk in your living room. Right next to the UFO (that's the laserdisc) the tall closet made of glass (the Playstation) and the urinal (the Wii).
I feel like in the minds of people who missed out on the progression through word processing, joysticks, DOS, the mouse, Wolfenstein 3D, Windows and YouTube, the internet is, like, a thing that you buy, like a refrigerator or a garage-door opener or a giant wood-paneled TV. I have no idea if this is remotely true, but it just seems to me that the kind of person who has been dismissing the personal computer for the last 15 years (Gore Vidal comes instantly to mind) would have trouble making the leap to a new paradigm of what this magical qwertical machine does.
So when politicians talk about the internet, imagine them imagining the internet as a winged kiosk in your living room. Right next to the UFO (that's the laserdisc) the tall closet made of glass (the Playstation) and the urinal (the Wii).
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