The Internet (as distinct from the internet) does some pretty amazing things. It is impressive how real so much of it is, with all that media focuses on anonymity and avatars - that people engage and connect with so many more people in so many more revealing ways than we do with strangers we pass by on the street. There's self-selection there, like knowing that people with the same color shirts as you like the same kind of thoughts, but really it's the same sort of stumbling upon random people you've never met before who are willing to share pieces of what they've created or dreamed up. Like strangers, except that you can run into them sharing themselves whenever you want to. Which, really, is kind of creepy.
And we invent ideas, or react to ideas and improve them, and in all of it we create communities. And it is Slow. When we stumble into these communities, generally it's when they're already fairly formed - because when they're being created, it's four people that sat around one night dreaming something up, or a guy recording videos of himself talking about stuff every day for no particularly good reason, only to end up with lots of people following. And then all of those people sharing themselves, through singing or sandwiches or dressed-up vacuums. But things happen slowly, one person at a time, because the Internet is based not on large advertising budgets but on arbitrary interesting things spread and talked about and added to by one person at a time.
And here's the really amazing thing: the Internet (which is really a separate universe altogether from the newssites and Facebook and email - though these provide connections) is built on the ethics we'd like to see everywhere - that people are equal, that things should be available and fun and intellectual and beautiful as well as functional, and that if things are wrong, we should fix them. And that's codified in things like the zen of open data and creative commons, but it's also totally visible in webcomic news posts.
So when the [real?] world is gloomy and full of strife and seemingly intractable problems, it's fantastic to realize that we created this wonderful thing that is alive - even if we didn't directly create much of the content, by looking (and providing page-views) or sharing (and bringing more people into this infinitely agile space) or buying (and supporting these things). And if it seems like the problems the Internet is tackling {indirectly, unintentionally, slowly} are unrelated to the problems we face in energy and water and taxes and equity and hate, remember that it is slow, but that change is coming. In robust and open ways of communication. In providing a space to remember and campaigns that anyone can get involved in - by stumbling on strangers. In small pieces and places, loosely joined, we are creating an ethic and a way to approach the next decades, something that is seeping into reality as it changes and reinforces the people that create it. And that's really something. Take heart. Because by reading this (and drilling deeper through the links), you're part of that too. :-)