Late Bloomer

I just realized, today, this instant, that I have been living under a rock for quite some time, and that this age information in which we live is truly amazing. For example, this blog is awesome http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/. And this guy published a book from it last year. He simply started writing a blog and enough people in the world read it, and liked it, and he is now famous because of it.


Thinking back on the last ten years of my life, I can see how I've avoided all the media outlets and portals to information that so many people were accepting as a daily routine. I have not owned a TV, let alone watched one for more than an hour in the last nine years, and I only recently began to spend any time "surfing the web" for things other than school related topics. Granted, I did and do listen to the radio, but limit myself to NPR or the local public stations, so I'm not completely devoid of knowledge about the day-to-day news content. I realize now that I have viewed the media, to borrow a Marxist term, as "an opiate of the masses" and therefore have avoided allowing it to subdue me. I have always advocated for interpersonal communications, or reading a book, or direct experience to gain knowledge about the world rather than accepting what someone (especially" The Man made" media) tells you. But I am now coming to view media outlets as the tool, that I truly believe them to be, that can expand those original ideas. I guess, as with anything in life, balance and moderation are the best method, and skepticism and further research are never a bad way to go either. I am, obviously, still going to be selective of my choice of entertainment and knowledge bases, but I am, at this point, open to the idea that the human race is not going to immediately erase thousands of years of evolutionary progress in the development of the brain by clicking around on the internet and watching "Fail" videos on YouTube. Instead I can see how the internet is more of a portal to a world-wide media form (duh...www) that can show us the world and the ways that people think and live differently, which may ultimately lead to a greater acceptance of such differences. I guess this revelation sounds unremarkable to most people who have been up-to-date with the last few decades of technological advancement, but for me it's exciting to experience this new found world of communication and information.