Log on and tap into another dimension, a realm of sights, sounds and
some minds.  Journey through procrastination and linger with some
masturbation.  You’re moving into a zone of facts and distortions,
reality and hyperbole, history and imagery.  You are on the internet and
there is no getting off.

In the 21st century, the world wide web is alive and thriving.  It feeds
on people’s dreams – capturing lives of the unaware.  Now before
children are even born, they spark life online.  Status updates, tweets
and photos predate the emergence – and sometimes, even the procreation
is recorded for amusement.

With parental pride, children’s lives are tracked with a gps timeline –
leaving a trail for all types of prying eyes.  As this web-feed streams,
it stores hopes and dreams – while the cyber-records retain every
comment, every like and every site ever seen.

It’s all out in the open, waiting for the next manipulation.  Virtual
registers, reports and profiles – sharing diverse forms of data. 
Photographs with spider tags link images without control, while pictures
can be copied and distorted uncondoned.  So hang on tight to the
perceptions of privacy, because today everything is just a few clicks
away.

Currently cameras are everywhere, recording the movements of billions,
with millions of digital devices streaming the moments of our civilians.
  Linking images to the clouds and databases underground – the
significant and obscure, the epic and the somber, the hits in the nuts
and the pictures of big butts – everything can be seen online.

Social media takes the personal to another level – transmitting intimacy
for eternity.  For once it uploaded, it may never go away – a testament
for history that can spread further every day.  Still this is a choice
that some people make, to post their memories and share them for global
uptake.

Simply put, this notion is not new, Candid Camera and The Real World
were just a preview.  Now it is common to broadcast yourself, to reach
for an audience with ambitions of notoriety and wealth.  Sometimes all
you need is a gimmick to hook them in, then hope the clip goes viral and
see what you win.  The more outrageous the better, but the next one
you’ll have to top, living life to the extreme, it’s never going to
stop.

While adults can embrace the madness, and claim their lives with honesty
and awareness, today’s children could have never known that they were
born into this cyber-zone.  In the age of information, knowledge is
power, and some of the data collectors are more than simple marketers.

The net holds hidden dangers, turning the technology against itself,
when hackers armed with viruses, pry into private files, while concealed
as someone else.  Identity theft becomes a cyber-rape for adults and
children alike, damaging credit, hijacking hardware and causing all
sorts of strife.

As big brother and the corporate father establish vigilance for security
– liberty and freedom become pawns, while the tv talking heads yawn. 
Now democracy slopes towards novelty, as the populace plods along
numbingly, trapped by their own apathy, scrambling for the scraps of
money.  When perceptions become distortions from mergers limiting our
voices, their views become distractions against balanced progressions.

Avatars and internet bars open portals for people to play, using layers
of stealth to conceal themselves as they quietly click away.  Anyone can
become anything in this cyber-realm, using gadgets galore and a little
knowledge of forms, creatively shaping their own vision of norms.  From
the freaky to the sublime, everything can be expressed if you look
online, all with the power of possibilities, but it will suck up your
time.

And yet there is no death on the internet, even deleted profiles have
lingering subtext, and passcodes are passed down in wills.  Still once
your body dies, your legacy may reside through your loved ones’ reprise,
arising with a multi-media tribute that can survive and thrive.  On the
web, youth is eternal and fame is slow to subside, especially once you
have lived with a cyberlife.

 

Written by: C.D Flash

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