Internet Pacifies the Urge to Explore

This is one of the topics in Speaktacular 2013, a debate competition organized by MS-TSEC. Being a part of the Club Team, a team mainly responsible for debates, literary events and quizzes(intellectual events), I was among the moderators. As I had to listen to them and take down notes, I decided to elaborate on some of the topics I personally liked.

The proposition started the debate with defining the word 'explore' and the opposition started theirs by defining 'pacify'. Explore basically means to investigate and find out more on a matter. Pacify means to quell the excitement. Both the teams went along the same points and examples, showing how it justified their part of the argument. This topic and the debate attracted me for the simple reason that I have felt both ways about it.

The proposition agreed that the Internet is a medium with more control, simplified to users, interactive, free, verifiable and social. No denying either of the points. We get all information we need at our finger tip. Internet has curbed our will to get out of the house. We feel like watching a movie, there is torrents. Online shopping saves us the trouble to actually go to all the shops and find clothes for ourselves. Those treasured books on travel and cookery have lost meaning. Pranks have become more of a YouTube thing. Feel like having a pizza? Dominos is now online for us. All those budding Sheakspeares open a blog to display their talent(guilty). What happened to submitting articles in the newspapers and waiting for it to get published? Photos and videos are intended to be posted on Facebook, not laugh about, 10 years down the line. 

The proposition mentioned about the time when Columbus set out to discover India, but ended up in America. He had an adventure worth of a lifetime. Now we have all we need on Google. Also the time is dead when sitting in the library for hours searching for an information was a trend for all the Hermoines out there. We spend the whole day on the net rather than getting out there and interacting with the world.

Well there is another side to the argument as well. The opposition claimed that Internet instigates and not pacifies the urge to explore. We go searching for one little detail on the Internet. Before we know it, we jump from one link to another, saturating ourselves with information. If you follow the right kind of accounts on Twitter, you get news all around the world. It urges you to go about finding out more about the matter in hand. The information is also upto date, unlike in books which are out of date.

Internet being cheap, except for the wifi you pay for, it doesn't restrict the amount of knowledge you can obtain. Be it from some free online guitar classes to content for your debates. We can learn so many recipes and experiments on YouTube. We get exposed to music which channels like MTV and VH1 don't show. We get more options when it comes to shopping, without sweating it out in the sun. Many YouTube celebrities like Ryan Higa and Chester See have got recognisition thanks to the Internet. Howstuffworks is one of the best sites to explore science and technology. You also get to interact with people from different countries and get to know their culture first hand. You don't have to go anywhere to search for anything, so it doesn't discourage the lazy bones to go about exploring.

For quiztacular, being in the club team, we had to google up good questions. I remember spending hours on the Internet learning new stuff, and trivia about my favorite artists, actors and athletes. I learned so much about happenings around the world. I actually discovered the story behind many songs of The Beatles. I would deviate often into mythology and history of a lot of stuff. 

Also the opposition mentioned a personal example. He said that he had a RAM problem once. So he went on the Internet and searched for shops or people who could repair it. After hours of exploring, he actually figured out the way to do it himself. It saved him some money and he learnt something new.

In the end it all sums down to how you use it. You can copy paste your assignments from Wikipedia or go to 10 different sites and engross yourself in the topic in hand.