61) United

Remember when I told you about that speck of light in that new technological monument? You know, that Halo: Reach thingy?

Now that the game's been out for awhile, the monument has finally shut down (a personal Facebook message told me so), so let's take a look back on what was accomplished here.

Over the course of about a month, 118,422 people used their Facebook pages to post a contribution to the memorial. That's not counting the people who visited the site and didn't have an Facebook to contribute. (Rare these days, no?)

The dots came from all over the world, stretching from Milan to Osaka. Hell, they made a video about it:

In that earlier post, I talked about being united, having a sense of belonging. It all becomes much more satisfying once you know the numbers and statistics behind this little advertising campaign. People all over the world, many of whom will never meet each other, used the internet to share a single common passion. It's difficult to grasp that something like this, especially for a video game, could've happened just little over a decade ago.

That's what the internet revolution has done for us. If the new Facebook movie is any indication, it's that the internet plays a vital role in our lives. Instead of us mastering it, it now has the ability to master us.

It has the potential to bring us to tears, make us laugh, do stupid things, etc. Next to that, you've got the cultivation of a new online language as legal as ebonics, pictures of cats and their witty captions, or Youtube videos of morons hurting themselves.

I admit even I feel a bit internet incompetent sometimes. Coming from a seventeen-year old that spends 50% of his time on a computer, this might seem blasphemous. But then again, you don't see alot of seventeen year-olds these days convey information in readable grammar and spelling. (I try, anyway) Some of my peers would find this revulsive, just as their English teachers would cry tears over their texts.

Even a youngster like me can't help but feel a little slow when it comes to texting, Twittering, etc. I don't do texting or Twittering, but the fear exists in me that someday I might be forced to do it for some job or something.

Technology is indeed growing more generational by the day. Why a couple of days ago, I had a good laugh when my English teacher couldn't make his projector connect to his laptop. I sensed that he could feel our snickering eyes follow his every action, but when he finally got it to work, there was a loud and clear "Ha!" directed right back at us.

So there exists the possibility that when I'm old enough to be a sagacious teacher, I won't be able to keep up with technological trends. Who knows? By then paper books might be extinct, or they've perfected installing whole computers into a chip that can plug into your head.

At least I won't go it alone. As a generation, we can be united. Not necessarily to control the world with technology, but rather provide a voice of reason against technology controlling us.

For now, I can settle for being number 81,361 out of 118,422 little dots, all soldiers of an online generation.

60) Running Too Fast

Alot of the discussions in my AP government class are often spontaneous. A group of well rounded students interested in politics have the capacity to go off on some glorious tangent. On top of that, they also have the remarkable capability to listen to each other with respect.

It's proof that the thirst for education and the truth is not dead. Even though everybody in that class would like to be elsewhere, it's an alluring atmosphere of clever jokes, valid points of argument, and never-ending rounds of discussion. It is in itself very representative of American government.

But there is a large difference between this group of students and the politicians in Washington D.C.

That difference is electronic competency.

This post made me laugh hysterically. In a way, it's sad to see the older generation try and catch up with current times. Some people are beautifully adept at it, streamlining their opinions using new fads of technology.

But in this case, a Senator trying to be discreet has no idea what he's doing. Spraying evil hate is difficult when people can trace it back to the origin. D.C. has changed.

But my lack of faith in our government is not the focus of this post.

More and more recently, I've come to believe that human innovation has outpaced it's own capacity to understand it as a whole.

To be fair, this is applicable to any idea or concept like war or weapons. It is arguable that humans in their thousand year history still haven't mastered the wheel.

Look at it this way: radio's been around for a century, and we're still using it today even though it's slowly dying. T.V.'s been around for more than half a century, and your grandfather remembers when their image was still black and white. Less than a decade ago, computers suddenly became available for personal use.

Our period of acclimation is growing shorter and shorter as innovations are coming faster and faster.

My point here is that we're struggling to understand the newest technologies that will fade away before we have sufficient knowledge to use them properly. It allows for carelessness. This is why people are blasting Facebook as a degenerate group that encourages stupidity and conformity. Failbook can attest to this.

Eventually we'll invent some new technology that can solve our problems. But before we're able to understand how to use it, the world is destroyed in some nuclear firestorm.

Perhaps that's the truth behind the 2012 apocalypse.

59) Willow

A long time gone, in rolling fields,
Only once I came upon a willow tree,
In its shade sat an old man,
Who eagered me down for his story.

He gave tales of his heartbreak youth,
Of a time before I was born,
Of failed endeavors and greatest success,
Of old age and wonder of death.

Finally, he asked for my tale,
And I could not find the words,
So I told him in kindest respect:

For I am too young to know,
Much to convey my life in words,
As you have seen the sights I have not,
And hear the sounds I have not heard.

He closed his gray eyes and smiled,
Set upon a frail hand on me,
Faded away into whispering wind,
No longer alive could he be.

Echoes lost in the quiet wind,
A long time gone in the fields,
I once knew a man who told me,
Under the shade of a willow tree.

58) Aftershock

With over nine years gone from that fateful day in New York, people still cringe at 9/11 and its repercussions. Everybody remembers where they were that day. More importantly, they remember the years afterward.

I was in elementary school when it happened, and I can still remember the absence of cartoons after school that day. I realized all the channels were filled with Bush's face, speaking in words I could barely grasp.

My teacher could barely understand it himself when we asked him about it. We were huddled in a circle, and he spent the entire period fielding questions with a shock I was not old enough to understand.

How long we've all come since then.

A failing economy, a war nobody wants, and the very ideals of an American constitution strained. Life does go on, but nobody is willing to admit that things are alright. They're not. Everything is quickly spiraling out of control, and the prospect of recovery seems nearly impossible.

So when we look back on 9/11, it is much more than just casualties and suicide bombers. It is a symbol of a united America, a justification for all that we have done in the past decade. It is the origin for most national issues we harbor today, and will foreshadow what the next decade we live in.

Such a symbol will never die. The innocent victims have become martyrs of American ideals, and people will accept no less. A national holiday has been designated for 9/11, simply known as Patriot Day.

Let's get one thing clear: people die everyday. There are only two reasons why we remember select individuals:

1) They accomplished something life-changing/memorable in their lifetime.

2) They died for a memorable cause.

What did the victims of 9/11 die for? A war fought in their honor? A ravaged economy? A divided America?

What would they think of America today?

57) Forbidden Logic

When you're in a class like AP Computer Science and work with Java, most people have no idea what you're talking about. It falls a bit close to being a racial stereotype in which you only expect one kind of person to understand what the self proclaimed elites call "serious business".

When I tell people about the class, I don't blame them for saying out loud their mental image of a good little nerd pushing their glasses back up and talking in that lisp. We sit quiet and conetnt, even exited as we punch in zeros and ones.

Were it so easy.

One or the other is not how any life works. There are gray areas we understandably avoid for various reasons. The older I get, the more I see ways to creep into gray areas.

My AP Comp Sci teacher told us on day one that the stuff we learned in his class could be used to cause alot of computer harm. Destroy a school network and the like. He made a simple rule:

Use your powers only for good, not for evil.

Me being my military self, its easy to give into my aggressive tendencies for destruction and brute force. I've already thought about doing computer evil a good dozen times already.

Thus we delve into the realm of self-control. One of the few things that separates the old from the young. Can't say that for all people, but everyone knows how easy it is to lose control, especially when you're a young child.

Losing control at school is not a good thing. I've done it before. We all have. It's an outlet for all those raging emotions. I keep telling myself to find an outlet.

My poetry's been on the fritz, as is my writing. I have more time than anybody else I know, and I can't bring myself to produce something more meaningful. If you have the time, get out there and express yourself for a little while in any way you know how. It's good for the soul.

There's this new guitar class at my school that I'm in. Nothing fancy, but I already broke the damn b-string. We all gotta start somewhere. School isn't as bad as it used to be. But then again:

Were it so easy.