pros and cons of being a cybergeek

my father believes that the best word that could be associated with me is "computer". i would have thought it would be something deep like "introspective" or "philosophical" or something out of this world which would send my ego sky rocketting up to the air. but no. just a plain word. "computer". and i think my father has developed a certain fondness for the Nokia N93 (i must say, the commercial is a work of a genius having Gary Oldman endorse the phone) because he offered to get me one next year. then he took it back and said that a Macbook would probably be more suitable for me because again, i am his youngest child who spends a lot of time in front of the computer all day.


this word association of his has a basis, you know. can't say i can blame him for thinking that word. i can spend hours in front of the computer just surfing, typing, downloading, or watching ridiculous videos on YouTube. i can browse photos on Flickr or artworks at Deviantart the whole day and not get bored. you see where i'm getting at? i'd like to believe that i'm not the only one who does this because well, fellow geeks lurk in cyberspace. my family has to know that so that they won't think i am the little member of the family who has no life. and then there's my enthusiasm whenever people ask help for their templates or anything related to blogging. i rant on and on, click here click there and voila. i'm a happy tutor.

my parents asked me last night where i got to learn about Photoshop and blogging and everything else i've learned over the internet. i told them that i read a lot and the first time we got an internet connection i was instantly interested in design, photoshopping, and photography. my mother proudly declared, "it's a gift". haha! i wish i could say that it is. i think learning doesn't take effort when you're already interested in learning in the first place. and it amazes me that they are already amazed with how much the internet could teach a geek when what i know so far doesn't even equal half as much as what other talented real web designers do.

the internet is a dangerous place to be in but i think i'm old enough to handle lurking in this dangerous borderless digital world. what you see or read from the internet can quickly infiltrate a person and affect his/her ideals or views. it is a dangerous influence that if not handled properly, could probably break you. i wouldn't want my children to be like me when they're younger than 16. there are so many cyber criminals lurking around in Friendster, MySpace, and other chatrooms and because there is no regulation on cyberspace or laws that govern cyber crimes (unless you live in China where internet police exists...), cyber crimes are committed everyday single day. there are no days when i'm not paranoid about who reads my blog, who browses my Friendster profile, so on and so forth. i guess it's all a matter of taking care of what information you give out to the public.

yeah, well. being a cybergeek is both good and bad. the good includes having easy access to information. for me, i made Google News my homepage and personalized it according to my topics of interest. Of course, there's the Breaking News, the Business section, and Global Economy. these news topics are filtered according to my preference so that what's hot in these areas are delievered to me fresh each time i log onto the internet. it's both good and bad. bad in such a way that i get bad news delivered to me the minute they happen and like i always say, it's depressing to be in-the-know about current events. you'd notice how much these news are more on the "bad" than on the "good". and then there's gaining access to government agencies' websites and reading their annual reports (i got interested in this because of Prof Ponsaran). the internet can also foster a person's interests like what photography did to me. browsing at such breathtaking photos in Flickr inspired me to take photos of my surroundings myself. the world is beautiful, Philippines is beautiful and it is such a waste not showing it off to people.

my most favorite activity in cyberspace is *drum rolls please* BLOGGING! d-u-h. i bet that wasn't too hard to guess. but like Tito Jon said, blogging was created probably for people with star complex. it was a joke, of course. but i remember some anal columnist from Philstar's Young Star section writing about bloggers and blogging. he said he doesn't get the idea of blogging and bashed the whole act of blogging itself that made my blood boil. but to each his own, right? so let the anal columnist stick his ideas into his mouth and get away with bashing blogging like that because some may not get the act of expressing or writing about one's life on blogs for all the world to read. but you see, it's different from a blogger's point of view. blogging is like therapy for others-- especially for me, a person who is highly opinionated. while i may be talkative, my brain is the same too. it's er, "thinkative". so yeah, this blog is the output for that.


so yeah. cyberspace is a whole new world with countless websites to explore and countless things to do. while the cyberworld may be a happy and shiny place, we cybergeeks must not forget that the original happy shiny place is the real material world that we live in. so a balance of living in both worlds is probably the best way to live and remember to take extra precaution with your activities in cyberspace.

happy surfing! :)

SIDENOTE: dictionary.com's word for today is hypnagogic. i love it already cause i'm always hypnagogic. :)

hypnagogic \hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\, adjective:
Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep.

It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered later on.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", New York Times, June 6, 1993

neat!