In the fifties came transistor radios and ear buds. People looked straight at you, unaware you had greeted them. Slowly the light came on in their eyes, they removed the ear buds and said, “Huh?” Progress?
Next, cell phones arrived for almost everyone. Then the phones morphed into baby computers with Internet access and a color touch screen. Nice, but not while driving, as we are finding out.
About the same time, Apple, PCs, Microsoft Windows and the Internet blossomed like keys to the whole world. Type anything into Google Search and get millions of answers in .2 seconds. Some were good.
Millions found the Internet served another purpose, satisfying an insatiable need to share with everyone else. And they found a place for it in a social network called Youtube.
Back in November of 2005, three men wanted a way to share home videos and launched YouTube with $11.5 million in start-up money. In 2006, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. That year, YoutTube reported 65 thousand new videos submitted daily, watched by over 100 million viewers. More recently, 60 hours of new video arrive every minute, with an estimated 800 million viewers a month.
YouTube is still like the keys to the whole world, but I have learned caution. I used YouTube to research early American History. I filled a spiral notebook with names, dates and places.
At first I felt overwhelmed. Then suddenly it was all clear to me. The secret lies in critical thinking, in accepting nothing without evidence, disregarding all the hype that came with a few good points.
I can follow up on anything I found, just using other sources. In the meantime, this is great entertainment.
Maybe everything I read and watched is true. Back in the 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton may have had a dream even grander than that of Martin Luther King Jr. He called it a New World Order, a New Atlantis, and shared it with Benjamin Franklin, who sought to realize this in the nascent United States of America. Maybe as a result, the secret society known as the Illuminata, drawn from the ranks of Skull and Bones, the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians, have started all the wars in the world, from both the American and French revolutions, both World Wars, and more recently have begun World War III by blowing up the World Trade Center so we could invade the Mideast. That will give them most of the oil in the world plus the more profitable drug trade. Then they would have the funds needed to realize their New World Order, so that all of us will have one government, one country, one set of laws for all, and one leader.
They will have spent over 200 years for nothing. Even before they can call off all the wars, scoop up all the world’s wealth and make all of us submit to implanted microchips that they can turn on and off at will and block all our individual assets including our Social Security numbers, our credit cards, and even our Ipods, they will be out of time. In December, when the Mayan calendar runs out, the world will end. Maybe it will come even sooner, when agents of our government, who have been trained to make their minds read the future and have learned that the Japanese tsunami was the next to last sign before the Apocalypse, find some giant solar flare that will be the campfire and the earth will be the marshmallow.
How can I call all this great entertainment? Something that I learned a long time ago: Whatever it is, “Take it with a grain of salt.” Kick in your critical thinking. Maybe it is all true. Unless it isn’t.
All you need is a computer, Internet access, and a comfortable place to sit. In Google, type in YouTube.com, kick back and explore.
Bring a salt shaker. You’ll need it. Bon voyage.
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