what if?
What if we’re wrong. And by ‘we,’ I mean people who agree with me. I think that about a lot of things. For instance–as much as I might think fundamentalist right-wing narrow-minded racist misogynistic homophobes are idiots–what if I’m wrong. What if, when I depart this plane of existence, I am greeted by the real St. Peter–at a real gate, with a real clipboard in his hands-and he’s working through a checklist.
“Okay–pro-life…that’s not good. Had sex with other men…that’s a no. Believed that Christian doctrine is –and I’m quoting here–’a feel-good myth that keeps people weak and easy to manipulate and encourages right-wing narrow-minded racist misogynistic homophobia’–that is not what we’re looking for.” And then, I’m cast into the fiery pit.
Or what if we’re wrong about the internet. What if, instead of being potentially infinite, there is actually a limit to the amount of, for lack of a better word, crap that can be posted to the web. What if, at some point, some blogger (or worse–‘Twitterer’) could post something entirely innocuous, and all of sudden, the internet is full. No more room. What if all that information basically crashed the whole thing–one nerd in his basement thinks “I should add some Flash animation to my website, then link my website to my Facebook page where people can see a link to my YouTube video–” and the whole thing goes kerflooey.
No more IMDB, no more Googling, no more email–talk about a good old-fashioned Christian apocalypse…the skies would be raining twenty-something middle-management lemmings jumping out of corner offices–the streets would be littered with Blackberries and Bluetooths (Blueteeth?). People would be forced to actually talk to each other.
Guess this was a little dark. I’m kinda moody. See ya tomorrow.

So, allow me to flex my nerdly muscles and state the following: although there are many things that could cause the Internet to crash (natural disaster, terrorist/hacker attack, power failures, bugs in router configurations), a little extra content is not one of them. The ratio of current content to potential content is something akin to a grain of sand versus all beaches and deserts on earth. It’s the amount of usage that’s the bigger issue; most content sits quietly on servers until requested.
So don’t worry about that part. I have no expertise on the eternal judgment part.
***Note: the views expressed here are not necessarily those of Google. Or Gogol, for that matter.
Chris
13 Aug 08 at 2:28 pm
I have the title for the story: “The Tweet that Killed the World.”
Matt
13 Aug 08 at 4:07 pm
Well, if you are cast into the fiery pit, at least some of your friends will be there, so don’t worry!
Copy Editor kicks in…there’s a typo in the last full paragraph…
Deborah
17 Aug 08 at 7:41 pm