the influence of the web and new media...

For years I've been going on to all my friends about how wonderful the Internet is and 'how did we live without it'. But of late I have been wondering about it's influence on our lives.

Especially the generation that's growing up not knowing there was once a time when one  bought reference books and encyclopedia's, or one had to go to the local library to look stuff up for homework projects.

A mobile phone was a big red box on the back of a lorry, and twitter was what birds did in the early morning and a hub was part of a wheel.

But aside from all the good things on the web, there are also seamier things out there .... All sorts of sexual weirdness, nasty jokes, demoralising sides of society. I worry that the youth of today will be exposed to even more perversions and become used to things that are perhaps not to the good of society on the whole.

The recent riots in England affected me a lot.
A whole load of undisciplined citizens burning, pillaging and looting - where has decency gone ?

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy duddy, but I worry about the effects of MTV on our kids, the zap culture surrounding us and the lack of respect for authority at all levels of cizilisation. 

So maybe it's a good thing I am so old, I might not see the world dissolve into total decadence as the Romans and Greeks seem to have done. But maybe that's the way things go, a never ending circle of building up and breaking down of society.