lovespeakeasier

As a kid, I used to love to absorb random facts from wherever I could find them: encyclopedias, Trivial Pursuit cards. I used to beg my mom to buy me the Guinness Book of World Records or yearly Almanac from the Scholastic book club. Newspaper Q&A columns, too, were another reason I knew random crap at an extremely young age, like why shower curtains get sucked into showers when there’s water running, and how to remove blood from clothing (long before I got my first period — TMI, I know).  I was basically a precocious little shit. And still proud of it, if I’m being honest.

I guess it was impressive that I was a fount of useless knowledge at such a young age, and it did come in handy when I was part of my grade school’s W5H team, but now that I’m older most people don’t care that I can spell the longest word in the English language. And the fact that there’s no need to memorize much of anything in the real world cos anyone can pull out their smartphone of choice and Google shit on the spot, well, then I just look like an idiot when I spit out all 45 letters of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis to my underwhelmed friends.

All of this just to say: I used to think that life would get too busy for me to want to learn everything about everything.  If not busy, then my priorities would definitely change what and how much I care about learning. Maybe I’ll be singing that tune in a few years if some other aspect of my life makes it more difficult for me to pursue my hobbies.  As of right now though, I’m still in love with taking it all in. All of it. It might mean that I’m attached to the internet more than is healthy, but there’s just soooo much out there, and it makes me overwhelmed, but also constantly excited and insatiated.

I love seeing social experiments like Ask Metafilter** flourish because it instantaneously answers peoples’ questions in simple, short, layman’s terms.  What’s more, this question/answer process happens like, a hundred times a day — and that’s just on this site — as opposed to the Q&A columns running once a week when I was still a precocious shit.  This will forever be amazing to me.

If Trivial Pursuit cards were my weapon of choice 15 years ago, then the internet and it’s ability to organically aggregate information just by the power of community and a collective desire for knowledge is my gat. I feel like there’s no excuse for me to not know a little bit about everything, and even though this will make me sound extremely privileged, I really believe that there’s no excuse for people to not strive for that type of Jack/Jane-of-all-trades knowledge, especially if you have the time and resources in front of you.

Now I’m just being judgmental. But really, I’m just glad to have at least lived part of my life where such extravagance was unheard of, because I take advantage of this era of hyper-pervasive-transparent-global-ubiquitous-whatever-knowledge as though it may one day be taken away from me. I remember when it was HARD to find information, I’ll tell my grandkids, who will probably be ignoring me, talking to their friends using camera phones embedded in their contact lenses. Or something.

**This entire entry was inspired by this particular AskMefi post, which happens to be my favorite kind of thing to read about on the innernets because it makes me sympathetic/more understanding of a point of view that is in conflict with my own. For the record, I read as many posts on AskMefi (and it’s sister site Metafilter) as I can in a day without risking the possibility of getting fired by my boss.  And that’s just one of many sites like it in my Google Reader. Yes, I still manage to have a social life, but I really wouldn’t blame anyone if they thought otherwise. =)