Local Internet

As the Internet grew and my time on it grew as well I always found it a great way to meet people, build relationships with people that I couldn’t normally be around and constantly be discovering new and exciting people and things. I wanted to reach as far into the internet as possible and be exposed to everything I could, I wanted to learn and I wanted to meet as many people as possible. The Internet is great for this and is virtually unlimited in where you can go.

My Google Reader started to become full of blogs from every corner of the earth. I am connected to people who I’ve met online because of similar interests. For the first time in history, we have the ability to be completely global in absolutely everything. Most things in my home probably didn’t originate from my country, and with the internet, that now included relationships.

However, my life is intentionally starting to shift to live a life that is more local. I am trying to eat more local, buy as many products as I can more local, get to know my neighbourhood and build better communities around me. As I do this, I am starting to feel a shift in the way I use the internet. The internet is becoming now more and more a tool to use amongst my local relationships. I pretty much only follow people on Twitter that I see face to face, unless they are exceptionally brilliant. My e-mails and Facebook conversations are almost only people in Sarnia. While the internet is still just as global as it always was, I find my use for is is changing. Instead of it being my portal into a new world it has become a tool to help me better interact with the world that I am already in.