Internet takes over as our preferred entertainment

I was the greenest of green reporters in the spring of 1992 covering one of Colorado’s largest school districts in Boulder County. As the new sports and schools reporter for the Louisville Times/Lafayette News, anything and everything relating to education was a potential story.

I still recall that morning in April when I visited Angevine Middle School to report on what I thought was going to be another ho-hum happy story about local kids doing semi-interesting stuff. It seemed a group of students there had established a connection with a sister school in China.

OK, that’s cool, but far from breaking news.

But it didn’t take long to realize what was happening in this classroom about 10 miles west of Boulder, Colo., was something completely different. These kids weren’t pen pals, they didn’t trade phone calls, they were interacting in real time (with a few seconds delay) with their Chinese counterparts. Gathered around a computer with the screen’s image projected on the wall, these Colorado students were among the first in the nation to use a new-fangled creation called the “Internet.”

I had never heard the word before and quickly learned that the Angevine students were selected as part of a University of Colorado pilot that was operating one of the first Internet servers in the country.

It wasn’t the sleek, sophisticated Internet we know today; rather, it was more of a glorified electronic bulletin board. While the teacher and students touted how cool it was to interact with a classroom half a world away, I admit I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I recall thinking this Internet thing wasn’t going to amount to much more than a grade-school novelty.

Boy was I wrong.

Pushing two decades later, I look back at that and can put into context being there for one of the first forays into the online universe. And no, I didn’t see Al Gore there.

Today, I admit to being an Internet junkie and it has completely taken over as my preferred means of entertainment. YouTube and the proliferation of interactive web sites like ESPN and The New York Times (a couple of my favorites — you can’t beat doing the Times’ crosswords any time you want) combine with other options, like being able to watch thousands of full-length feature films for free, augment the 24/7 global news cycle we now take for granted.

Much of it hardly rises to the level of being an intellectual pursuit — countless skateboard accidents, Candid Camera-like spoofs and the wackiest of wacky political rants. But there is so much more online these days I find I have to make a special effort to search out entertainment elsewhere. In fact, I haven’t watched television for more than two years, but will still make a trip to Eagle River or Anchorage from time to time just for the movie theater experience.

Lately, I’ve found Google searches highly entertaining. In an effort to make searching the Internet easier, Google will pop up suggested search threads while you’re typing. For example, if you wanted to know when to file your tax return, you could type, “When can I file …” and Google will pop up “… my taxes” to fill out the request.

Supposedly, these suggestions are generated by tracking the millions upon millions of searches people make. It’s not always that helpful, but can be wildly entertaining.

For example, entering “Why …” in the search engine brings up searches for:

n Why can’t I own a Canadian?

n Why did I get married to …?

n Why is the sky blue?

n Why do men have nipples?

Or, there’s this gem: “How come … a cupcake is not a mineral?”

Some are more helpful, like: “How to solve a Rubik’s Cube?” or “How to cook a turkey?”

Then there’s the question we’d all like to know the answer to: “When will … the world end?”

Add the realm of playing video games online, and it’s easy to see why so many 30-year-old nerds have no trouble hibernating in their parents’ basements for years at a time.

But the online community is still a poor replacement for the real thing. In the Valley, we have great local theater from the Valley Performing Arts and local high schools, fierce athletic competition and as much natural beauty as our brains can process. Get out of that basement and see the world again, and if you absolutely must, go ahead post your real-life happenings on YouTube for the rest of us.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.