In my high school English class, we read Fahrenheit 451, a wonderful book. Our teacher set up a discussion board online for us to post and respond to each other’s thoughts on the novel. We, a tight knit group of 30 living in small town Illinois, took this discussion board and and blew it right out of Fahrenheit 451 and into our everyday lives. Sure we discussed the book, but slowly our posts grew to include funny snipets about what happened to our waffles that morning, movies we’d seen recently and essays that needed to to complained about. Our teacher, dear Mrs. Heth, ended our discussions and they flew further and further from the book. And so, Swifty, ever so savy in technology, created a separate discussion board, for us to discuss…….anything. Soon the board expaned from 30 members to 50. Soon, school was over, summer was passing and we were going off to college. My family and I moved to Oregon, Tom and Jacob went to Chicago, so many with to the University of Illinois, some to Illinois State, some to Missouri, one to Boston, Swifty moved to Arizona. Our discussion board began to hold more meaning than silly snipets. We shared our lives through this discussion board. Our discussion board eventually faded away into nothingness. But what happened on the discussion board couldn’t have happened without the internet. Sending letters would not have had the same instantaneous impact. Conference calls could have been made with 50 people scattered across the country. Even with so many ways to connect on the internet, the discussion board stood out among the rest. A treasure. We had only each other to impress, each other who we knew so well. Facebook contained many new faces and strangers. Myspace had too many gadgets and gizmos. As our lives changed, and we moved away, the discussion board held us together. In the discussion board we could run away from our new responsibilities and lives, we could run back to our much simpler high school days.

For me, the discussion board stands out as one my most enjoyable times using the internet. No one hassled you if you didn’t respond, no one made you feel bad about slacking on your facebook comments. The experience was unique from other discussion boards or online networks in that we were already a community. The internet only enhanced our friendships.

It seems silly to me that people would advocate for everyone to have the internet, as though it is a right. Of course, who am I to say? I have the internet. My experiences with the internet have been positive whether for work , school or fun. If I didn’t have the internet, I know I would want to. As society as a whole moves further and further from traditional forms of communication, as the internet becomes the traditional form of communication, isn’t it right to be sure all members of society are able to participate? Slowly, we are moving from treating the internet as a luxury to it being a commodity we take for granted. My discussion group would not have occurred without the internet. Our teacher set it up originally, was it presumptuous for her to do so? As teachers begin assuming everyone has the internet, as stores hand out surveys you must take online, then maybe we should stop and consider that not everyone has the internet. We need to decide, if this is going to be how our nation communicates within itself, if the internet is becoming required in order to function within society, then perhaps in that way it is a right.

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