I sat in my 9-year-old son's room on a beanbag chair, reading through some of his school stuff and looking through his work. Weekly ritual. He was sitting at his computer. "I keep hearing about the White Whale and Moby Dick. It's a book, right?" "Yep," I answered, and looked up. Clickity-click as he typed and moused and then he had the Wikipedia entry up. Before the article even begins, it clarifies that its subject is indeed the book and not the Zeppelin song. He pulled up our networked media library and within a couple of seconds Jimmy Page and John Bonham were serenading each other softly in the background. He starts skimming and clicking and reading about allusions and real-life killer sperm whales and a character named Starbuck and Battlestar Gallactica and Cylons. I looked down at the sheaf of papers. His week's schoolwork. I looked up at him sitting at his little kid desk. This is big, you know? This Internet thing.
Tight post man, yes the internet is huge. When I can easily look up pretty much any information I want, it's pretty awesome for the quest of knowledge. It's like having a multimedia encyclopedia. Tell you're kid to keep doing that, but tell him to read up on some of the shit he sees online. That would make the internet a powerful tool in your child behaviour.
I was watching some czech girl strip on a webcam while chatting to a bunch of other horny middle-aged men and it occurred to me; "this is what the internet is for!"
I love looking up random stuff like that and having it branch off into a million other little things. I learn so much by it heh. I'm actually reading Moby Dick for school right now. A speaker who knew much about Melville's life came and talked to our class. He was very good, although the book is not my favorite.