Eryn's Quandary

The evil trinity; cigarettes, alcohol, internet

welcome to my first actual, involves writing post. I have made it from Sydney to China suitcase intact and we only lost temporarily one suitcase and, oh yeah, two aussies in a taxi with no money, no clue where we were or where we were staying and without a woed of chinese under their belt. (Surprisingly the taxi driver showed some ingenuity and drove to another hotel which had people who spoke English and through the process of elimination figured out where we were staying. Somewhere on my 36 hour epic journey across the world I found a newspaper article in "China Daily" that must be shared regarding the three great evils for adolescents alcohol, smoking, and internet cafes.
Ignoring the fact that these three acts are amassed into one category the article which I will abridge said already standing punishments for these things have been found to be not severe enough and in a draft amendment far more severe punishments will be issued for noth the youth and the cafe owners who do not comply to the bans. Li Dekui, vice president of the Standing Committee states that internet cafe's play a serious negative role in the lives of minors "many people call internet cafes 'electronic heroin'"

I like many read this and laughed with cynicism as many others will, then I considered the term 'net junkie' and it gave me pause that we ourselves do refer the internet as having drug like qualities... Certainly it is adictive, and it takes away masses of our lives. however I can't get passed the good that comes from the internet. As someone who has on several occaisions left my family and friends to travel for longer periods of time I appreciate the possibilites the internet offers for keeping contact with loved ones (and up to date on Neighbours), additionlly over the years I have found unlimited information on a multitude of topics and yes the majority was relatively useless but now I can sleep soundly at night knowing all the words to "i've been everywhere" and I know how to complete all seven leisure suit larry's with a complete score.
Not all of the net is about these pesky topics of 'free speech', and 'information' infact the vast majority of it is the useless crap that it's unlikely that anyone will ever look for. So I implore Li Dekui to look beyond the dagers of excessive internet use and celebrate the tool that opens the world to things that you don't want to, and may never need to knowbefore he condemns this technology.

posted by Eryn @ 3:03 pm