Explain the Internet to a 19th-Century Street Urchin

"YOU DO NOT REALLY EXPLAIN THE INTERNET UNDERSTAND SOMETHING UNLESS YOU CAN EXPLAIN IT TO YOUR TO A 19TH CENTURY BRITISH STREET URCHIN GRANDMOTHER." -Albert Einstein YOUR TIME MACHINE LANDS IN 1835 without anyone noticing your arrival. You OLIVER THE INTERNET have a passenger with you, but you warn them to stay near the machine to avoid causing a dangerous time paradox. You hide the time machine under some trash in the corner of an alley and walk out onto a narrow cobblestone street bustling with street vendors, farm animals, and beggars. Horse-drawn carriages rumble past. A young street urchin scurries up and tries to sell you match sticks. Barefoot and covered in soot, he tugs at your coat. "Buy my matches! They're so bright! They will keep you warm all night!" He glances hungrily at a nearby apple cart, whose vendor eyes him suspiciously. You buy a box of matches from the young urchin and say, "Do you know what the internet is?" He stares dully at you. 12 YEARS OLD 35 YEARS OLD (1) TALKING Moments later you are You pull the stuffed bear out and slip an audio tape into his back. His piercing orange eyes open with an audible click. "Hi!" the bear says, it's mouth opening and closing in a chewing motion, "I'm Teddy Ruxpin!" The waif screams in terror and runs away. You try to explain the Internet using a: stabbed from behind, and your posession is snatched from your hands by a gang of dancing chimney TEDDY RUXPIN DOLL SIMILE IPAD sweeps. (2) You pull out your ipad and try to hop on the Internet, but for some reason, you can't pick up a wifi signal. "Is there a coffee shop nearby?" you ask the waif. You're dead. "You see, the Internet is like a:" "IT'S IN THE AIR. - THE BOOKS ARE The urchin says, "I was inside a library once, before my parents died. Is the Internet a building? ENDLESS LIBRARY Mistaken for an escaped lunatic, you are arrested by Scotland Yard. INVISIBLE." SERIES OF TELEGRAPH WITH SOUND AND PICTURES TUBES "IT'S A SYSTEM OF SMALL MACHINES Where is it?" CONNECTED BY The urchin says, TELEPHONE WIRES." "what's a "IT'S LIKE A TYPEWRITER The urchin says, "What's a telephone?" (5) telegraph?" (3) The urchin says, "You mean like the tubes that run under the city?" THAT SENDS LETTERS INSTANTLY." The urchin says, "What's a typewriter?" (4) -BUY MORE OF HIS MATCHES EXPLAIN "IT'S A MACHINE FOR TALKING TO PEOPLE THAT ARE FAR AWAY. IT CONNECTS YOU." CLARIFY CONTRADICT EXPLAIN The urchin scrathes his lice-infested head. "Is "You can buy things through the Internet," you tell him, "without walking to the store." it like a window?" "Yes, but instead of "It's more like the roads fecal matter above the city, because goods and information can travel on them." BUY THE URCHIN AN APPLE CONTRADICT they carry infomation." EXPOUND ON МЕТАРНОR You've kept the urchin talking too long. His criminal taskmaster sees him lollygagging and whips him brutally with a willow switch, driving him away. Moments later you notice that your watch is missing. "The Internet is a door that connects you to You've confused the urchin. He the outside world. It You discover too allows to talk to "The Internet is a virtual city that's constantly expanding. Anything you can do in London, you can do on the Internet, It connects you to the world." wanders away. Moments later you realize that he's stolen your shoes. late that the apple vendor doesn't accept debit cards. You people and purchase goods without leaving your home!" are thrown into debtor's prison. You're dead. You came here to teach the urchin something, but he's the one who's taught you an important lesson The urchin picks a scab off his elbow and says, "Instead of walking over to someone's house to say hi to them, you can just talk through the Internet?" -outside a pub's window and listening to music, breathing the cold night air and smelling roasting lamb inside, you can just stay in your house and listen to music on the Internet?" about the shallowness of modern life. You are simultaneously embarrassed by your hubris and humbled by his simple wisdom. "Yes," you reply. "Yes!" you say, delighted. Suddenly you realize that the waif stole your wallet. "And instead of walking to the store, you can just buy things through the Internet?" "Then it doesn't sound like the Internet connects people, it sounds like it isolates them." The urchin folds up his rickety table of match sticks, gives you a long hug, then walks away. "Exactly." "And instead of crouching You catch a glimpse of him skittering away into London's maze of winding alleys, and run after him. You are stabbed by Jack the Ripper You are bitten by a plague-carrying rat You corner the urchin in an alley, and realize it's the alley your machine is hidden in. Why try to explain the Internet when you can just bring the urchin to the present and show it to him? You climb into the time You say, "f this crap," and return to the present. machine and put Oliver on your SHOW THE WAIF YOUR TIME START lap. As you carefully input your time destination coordinates, the urchin says, "Oy, what's all this then?" and starts smashing buttons indiscriminately. The machine shudders violently, and in an intense flash of light, disappears into the ether of the timestream. In the vear 2085, someone googles "the plague of 2010, patient zero," and your name OVER MACHINE pops up. "OH SNAP, I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING." "I TOTALLY SAW THAT ONE COMING," The time OLIVER 9000 The crowd of robots see the urchin Then why'd you let the urchin into the time machine, Nostradamus? machine stops traveling; the controls say you're in the year 3085. You and Oliver exit the machine and see a futuristic city bustling with and fall to their knees, chanting, "He has arrived! He whose arrival was foretold by Twitter!" "What's Twitter?" Oliver asks. "It's a thing on the Internet," you say. (PENITENT SILENCE) (SNARKY EYE ROLL)- "What's the Internet?" Oliver asks. robots that all -1075 YEARS OLD look like this: "Good grief." You set the time machine's coordinates for 1835. Hey, I'm sorry I yelled at you. Don't cry. C'mon, let's see where the rest of this chart goes :) CHARTED BY DOOGIE HORNER (1) I'm basing the age of the Internet off the creation of Telenet in 1975, which was the first packet-switching network available to the general public. (2) As they skip away you can hear them singing, "Chim chimaree, chim chimaree, chim chim charoo." (3) The telegraph wasn't invented until 1839. (4) The typewriter, in a design that matches the layout of the modern keyboard, wasn't invented until 1895. (5) The telephone wasn't invented until 1876. Sorry these footnotes are so boring. I guess they're unnecessary. Frankly, I'm just trying to impress you. "Oh, CMPANY look at all this tiny type! Everything on this chart must be true!" FAST