And now, ladies and gentlemen...

I was sitting in my living room, simultaneously watching the YouTube Democratic Debate on CNN and reading the latest edition of Wired magazine. An idea hit me, in much the same way that Mike Tyson driving a Mack truck would. Between watching Hillary fumble for responses and reading about making ice cream with liquid nitrogen, I started to wonder. What happened to the whole Web 2.0 thing? Naive as I was, I was expecting a full revamp of the way the internet works. Thinking back on it, I feel rather stupid now.

As I was sitting there, making snide remarks about Clinton, I realized that the Internet isn't just a piece of technology, that can be upgraded at will. It lives and breathes. It is directly shaped by the people who use it. I remember the days when really the only ISP was AOL. I was a young lad then (and now, come to think of it), only 11 at the time. I would only get on the net to go into the "teen" chat rooms (I know now that it was really 11 year-olds like myself and our 40 to 50 year old predators) and look at random pictures. There was no real work done back then, especially since I was only 11.

But those web designers have really pulled a fast one on us. Now, the Internet is an integral part of our culture. How many times have you prayed for fire and brimstone because the net was down and couldn't check your email? Now, instead of trolling through the Internet looking for porn or random bits of trivia, we're finding porn and random bits of trivia, but now we have video. But honestly, nowadays, we have sites like Facebook and MySpace that allow us to meet other people interested in the same stuff we are, and games like Second Life, where we can go to digital mock-ups of real places and talk to people, instead of actually going places. Google can show you millions of websites in a fraction of a second, all of which have nothing to do with what you were looking for in the first place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Everything you just read is what occurred to me in the space of about a minute. The actual purpose of my blog is to discuss the different ways that technology has evolved, and this particular post was intended to introduce this blog and myself to you, my valuable readers (both of you). As you can see, I got a little carried away. I tend to do that.

My goal with this blog is to educate those that otherwise would not have made these realizations. However, I think that most of the people who would normally be reading this already know whatever it is that I may have to tell them. Either way, I'm going to try to keep my updates as close to weekly as I can manage. You can probably expect everything from deep, insightful monologues about the impact of technology in our lives, to hot-headed rants on the stain of humanity that is 4chan.

As I said earlier (I got carried away again), this post is an introduction. My name is Kyle Herring. I live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and have nothing better to do in this town than to write a blog. I'm only 17 years old, but I think I have a reasonably good view on things like this, and I'm not a complete buffoon when it comes to technology, so I do have something to base my opinions on. However, that should not keep you from chiming in with your two cents. Blogs are a discussion, after all, and I invite everyone who reads this to either praise me on my insightful views on things, or, if need be, tear down my idiot assumptions and edumacate a young man on the workings of the real world. Also, please leave a comment every now and then, if only to let me know you read it. Until then...