The Internet is Art

Getting connected to the World Wide Web today can be seen as a simple task and can be achieved at almost any location around the globe. Practically any child can do it. Think of the internet for a moment. What is the internet? What IS it really? Is it simply a massive amount of electrical data viewable by millions of users worldwide? Or just a vast string of never ending ones and zeros, always changing? Let me share something with you now; the other day I found myself perusing the web as I oft times do, when a certain epiphany struck me. What is the internet? The world's largest conglomerate of human thoughts, ideas, and emotions. It is an always changing, ever present, living, moving, breathing thing. Art. Raw art. Pure and simple, the internet is the purest, most raw form of art ever conceived and created by mankind. No medium has ever has such a swift, dramatic impact on almost every life form from every age group throughout the world.

Art throughout the ages has always been a form of expression, praise, glorification, outcry, protest, support... almost anything you can think of, art has had its grubby hands in. Almost any feeling, emotion, or experience has been portrayed to the world through some form or medium by someone throughout the ages. What do we call art? Painters paint what they love, desire, and feel. Their emotions and experiences are felt and seen by the world through their brushstrokes. Emotion. They present to us emotion and feeling. Sculptors throughout the eons have carved away at bare rock and bronze to bring to life vivid visions that they have. They feel the shapes and figures as they sculpt away, slowly bringing out wonderful depictions of their innermost thoughts and feelings. It's the expression of these thoughts and feelings that fulfill one definition of the word "Art". Today, even as I type this, as you read this paper, there are countless people furiously typing away onto their online journals, or uploading their short films or photography shoots. Programmers, students, and homebodies alike are updating their web pages and typing up new code. The internet is used largely to convey the emotions of the users. There are enormous discussion boards and web sites where people spill their innermost thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Discussions of divergent viewpoints are held all the time in a countless number of online communities. The fact that large portions of the internet are free from censors makes the internet a very pure and raw source for uncurbed human emotions and expressions to be shared and viewed.

Another huge part of the internet is obviously its function. It serves as an electronic database of more information, knowledge, and trivia than any mere library in the world. The internet can be a source of almost any material you may need or a pathway to almost anything you may need to acquire. An enormous part of art is form following function. Architects and sculptors work with the idea of the form they're creating following a specific function in every day life. Product designers, engineers, fashion designers, culinary artists, interior decorators, and jewelers are just a few more examples of groups that struggle with form and function in their every day lives and careers. The internet is the largest gathering place for ideas, software, and files to be accessed, uploaded, downloaded, and shared ever conceived by mankind. The grace and beauty of countless billions of strings of code all simultaneously flowing worldwide to the greater goal of helping a seventh grader write a paper on the revolutionary war is a supreme example of the internet playing out its function in a superb way. The World Wide Web has many other functions beyond the mere task of information gathering as well. It is a community where people can come together to discuss ideals and global topics. It's a way for customers to contact local and global businesses and get the products, help, and technical support they need. It can keep families connected while on business trips or vacations, as well as allowing parents to keep a somewhat vigil eye on their unsuspecting college level offspring. The internet provides a vast network of videos, movies, and games to entertain thousands on an hour to hour basis. I myself have spent a countless number of hours playing games with my friends from back home in Indiana while I've been away at college here in Savannah Georgia this year. The internet keeps people connected to the things and the people they love or care most about in this world and it lets them do it with appallingly fast results.

The internet is art. I don't mean just a single web page, or line of code, or even one chat room. Art is the creation of something. Something good, or beautiful, or expressive... just something made that means anything to someone. The entirety of the internet, every single last line of PEARL or HTML all accounted for in a tight bundle together is the pinnacle of modern beauty in art. There are good things on the net and bad things, useful, and useless things. Like all pieces of art, people criticize it and people love it. But the art on the internet isn't any one individual page in and of itself, it's the mass collection of every page altered by every person who visits it, posts on it, uses it, and produces it. The Web is the largest collage to date, and it is ever growing and changing. The thing that makes it such an amazing thing is the sheer immensity of the work. Just the thought that so many individuals have contributed to this vast menagerie of emotion, entertainment, enlightenment and expression is an incredible feat in and of itself. The art is found in the whole, and each person who interacts with the web is like a painter adding a brushstroke of their own unique color and style to the community canvas. The sheer number of people involved in the creation and ever changing face of the internet is unlike any form of art ever seen. Never have there been so many contributors of all different ages, religions, and nations on a single piece of art.

To sum it all up, the internet is an art form. Not the use of the net, or the typing of code, or the downloading and uploading of files, but the entire internet. The art is found in its immense structure and its raw, pure collection of human expression and emotion. Expression is what makes humans human, and what makes art "art". When you examine these two key elements of almost all art, and particularly modern art, it is easy to see how the internet stands alone as the largest piece of human made artwork to date. It's pure and uncensored emotions, words, pictures, and videos make it as real as the people who use it, alter it, and abuse it. Its flawless function following its seamless form of electronic code is astounding. The functionality of the internet serves so many practical, formal, informal, personal, and community functions that it is simply one of the most all around useful creations ever established by humankind. It can truly be argued that the keyboard is quickly becoming one of the most used tools for artistic creation worldwide. When looking at all the proofs that I have shared today, how can anyone argue my point? Well, all critics have their own opinions on what is or isn't art... but at least if you've read this paper, then you know my opinion, and it's one that I hope to share with you.