Many cultures used to have a Holy River. A river where people did everything. They got their drink water from it, fresh fish to eat, they washed in it, but they also dumped their rubbish in it. This river was their source of existence, their source of life.
The Egyptians had the Nile in the old days, but today we all have a digital holy river. Better known as the digital high way or World Wide Web. From this river we get everything we want and also dump everything on it we want. Where do you get your music, movies and games? You don't get it in the store, you get it from this 'holy river'. Just like the latest news, recipes, opinions, how to do stuff, new contacts, new job opportunities, doing business, and so on. Google is our new God, because Google knows everything! He's one of the holy spirits who lives in the river and you can always ask him for advice.
Of course, you have to sacrifice things to this holy river. The river that streams through your home, through your computer or digital tablet. You can even drink from it in the palm of your hands with your smart phone! The spirits ask you to sacrifice your privacy, you have to give every spirit lots of information to get something done by them. By giving your information to a good spirit, you may risk it falling in the hands of a bad one or so called 'hacker' or the good spirit can become a bad spirit that keeps haunting you with its pop ups or spam.
But for lots of us this river is still holy, we can't live without the internet. The river takes over every lake and small stream. Television, radio, newspapers and magazines are all swallowed up by the internet. I always experienced this as a good thing, because it's handy to have all media in one place. To watch and listen to everything 'on demand.' The only disadvantage is, that we can all dump our shit in this river and the river becomes polluted, just like many real rivers on earth. The river has a lot of viruses and evil spirits, but we keep on using it because we can no longer live without it.
We all have a virtual ID and can't delete that anymore. So we better learn how to live with it, how to cope with social media and be very careful with what we write or publish on the internet. Only then one can be proud to belong to the first and second cyber generation! Share something beautiful or funny and make the river clean again. Just like I just did by writing this column.
