If you are just checking in - thanks for being here - this will be the intro to a 6 part series...the intro is free but the rest will be behind the paywall - would love to you have you join the community! Enjoy the read - tell me your thoughts

#readurbible especially Proverbs

Rules of the internet

Who taught you it? What is it? How does it work?

Depends on your age. I like many of you 35-45 y/o’s had a librarian show me how to boot up a computer, type in an .exe command and all of a sudden I was playing a pixelated match of Scorch. My Dad also had email at home, which was really just a big box, that took forever to turn on, got really hot and if you put this floppy black thing in it you could die of dysentary.

“Dad, what do you mean email?”

“It’s like the magical message that just shows up on your computer from anywhere else in the world?”

“Right, got it…we will call it the internet”

And away I went, oblivious to the cultural revolution at play around me. Graduating high school and realizing that adults were starting to carry around cell phones. Getting one myself when I was 19, but feeling frustrated that I had to pay .25cents when my friends texted me. The term “google it” was still not a thing, as I had to read books and cite actual books in my papers.

Now sitting here, my daughter has a phone, an email, and nearly every piece of information in human history available at her finger tips.

You may want to read that again.

Every. Piece. Of. Information. In human history.

It’s the internet. What? Still not sure, but the thing that has made the world smaller, more connected, and more accessible than ever before. It’s only evolving, and we use it in nearly every aspect of our lives. It impacts everything in your life. If you want to test that claim just ask an 8 year old who siri is, or what’s an influencer, or a 12 year old how their google folder works, or ask a 20 year old how much bitcoin they are stacking and what they think about central banking. You can also go to a fancy house and ask why the appliances have a wifi symbol on them…

Very few people can describe what the internet actually is, but the kids these days have watched nearly every adult use it, all the time. Many of them have been given devices at school to use it in for their school. Many of them have been given access to it to replace the need of a babysitter. And the discovery of the language of the internet evolves. Nobody supplementing that evolution process with real handrails or understanding of how it works. Rather a list of rules, and parental controls to restrict and control their behavior in hopes that the dangerous information at their finger tips will be hidden from them until an appropriate moment.

As adults, we had a similar situation. We were given a work phone or computer, or we started a bookface account and the dotcom craze went. At first it was amazing, productive, connecting, incredibly helpful. Then I clicked that link from that email that said everything was going to implode immediately or else! The thing stopped working as seamlessly, and then I discovered the suggested video that kept popping up was just what I was looking for! How did it know? Then the 11pm bedtime became 2am, it was always just one more…

So is it helpful or not?

Yes.

You can relate the internet’s influence to other technological advances throughout world history. Start with the printing press. It enabled the mass production of words and books. #disinformation. From copying something by hand, to the mass production of information. Didn’t really matter what is being reproduced, more the reality that it could be. What about modern medicine and chemistry? The evolution of penicillin has impacted billions, and yet chemical warfare seems to be the scariest thing for any nation to have to defend against. You can then move to guns. How are guns and the internet similar? It kinda depends on if you had a gun safety course. My doctor asks me at every one of my kids physicals if we have a gun in the house. Why? Because all of these things can be used to be constructive, destructive or neutral. Depends on the user, users background, and what is driving that user.

I have no desire to claim comprehensive understanding of the internet, or portray myself as an expert. I do however have experience with myself giving the internet permission to put me in a chokehold. I want to invite you to thrive in this technological revolution by understanding some parameters of the internet. Would you join me in building an understanding both for yourself, and for your kids, some basic boundary lines or rules of the internet. Here are the six as a starting point for your journey:

You can shut off your device whenever you want
The loudest gets the most attention
What’s spoken or written can’t be erased
Communication on the internet is to the whole internet
Someone is making money on your attention online
There is no private messaging

And remember this:
Ecclesiastes 1:9

“9 What has been is what will be. And what has been done is what will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.”
Thanks for joining me!