High Culture + Low Culture = THE Culture.

A combination of circumstances has left me without internet this week (this post comes from a Cafe Nero near you), a deprivation I might normally have relished with monkish pride (escape from social networking, more time to read, get outside in the sunshine etc etc) had I not been looking for employment. It turns out that looking for work is rather challenging without access to the web.

As the days go by I have noticed other, even more trivial endeavours hobbled by my lack of internet. I don’t know when any social events are occurring, for instance (Facebook does my calendar for me). Simple meals have become more challenging as I rack my brain for measurements and cooking times. I feel a little disconnected from the world (I can’t get Radio 4 on the laptop anymore). Several times I have left investigating a minor piece of information (phone numbers, cinema listings, directions to a bar) until the last minute, confident that I would be able to discover each fact with only the briefest of searches, remembering far too late that I can’t just jump online to find out, and here is the thing, I honestly don’t know how else to find out.

How do I find out cinema times without the internet? Is there a number you can call? And how do I find out what that number is? Do I just ask people in the street until one of them has it? Or do I go and ask the neighbours? If someone gives me an address how do I find it? My girlfriend doesn’t have a map of London in her house; she just has old issues of Heat I pretend I don’t read when she’s at work.

I’m not completely stymied. There is free wifi at several bars and cafes in the local area (which is a good thing, else you might not be reading this). My trip to Cafe Nero has become a daily pilgrimage, partly because they let you grossly abuse their loyalty card system. (“I would like eight of your cheapest green teas, please. And now for my free drink, I would like an extra-large hot fudge sundae macchiato with extra cream, another shot of espresso, and a dash of any particularly interesting syrups you’ve got back there.”)

But my reliance on the internet is worrying, not to mention debilitating. Every day I go to Cafe Nero and trawl Guardian jobs and Milkround and Indeed.com looking for work, like the good little graduate I am. But I don’t look up every piece of information I might conceivably need in a day. So then when I get home I am baffled by a seemingly innocuous question. I didn’t think I really used the internet much, and now I find I can’t get by without it.

I’m not the only one in this predicament, obviously. As a society we have moved away from what might be termed ‘fundamental knowledge:’ that which allows us to cook things from basic ingredients, to fix things when they break, where to find regular and multiple sources of information, so that if one is unavailable we are not completely foxed.

If I were a Daily Mail columnist I might at this point bemoan the above fact, confess my yearning for a simpler time when everyone knew how to make an apple pie from scratch, use a mangle, ride a horse to work or some such nonsense. Stuff that, frankly. I’d quite like to know how to make an apple pie, but I don’t want to frickin’ memorise it. I’d just rather look it up, thanks.

There are two reasons why people seem to know less about their fundamental processes. The first is the centralization of, and easy access to, all sorts of information. We don’t need to know off-hand how to get engine oil out of cotton trousers any more than we need to memorise the cinema listings in the paper in case we feel like going in the week. The information is right there online waiting for us. It feels like a new development but it’s not, really. It’s simply a more egalitarian arrangement. In days gone by rich people might have the sum of all human knowledge kicking around in their library, if they were bothered to look. Several of the more traditional (read: bigoted) politicians and aristocrats of the later 19th century worried what free access to libraries might do to the minds of the working class. They phrased their arguments as concern over the brain capacity of the poor, as if learning French or classics might make them forget to how to use a hammer, but what they were really panicking about was the idea that extra knowledge might awaken the working class to how well and truly they were being stiffed by their supposed betters. The emancipatory effect of common access to knowledge is one of the main arguments used at the moment by those trying to defend our libraries against the public service cuts of the current austerity government. But the public’s current access to information via the internet must have those old lords and ministers spinning in their graves. While the information available on the internet might be of lower edited quality than that found in the average library, it’s certainly more pernicious; just ask China. (Don’t bother, they don’t write back. I’ve tried).

The information provides emancipation is indirectly related to the second reason why we have less basic knowledge: the emancipation of women from the home.

Let’s face it, when anyone harks back to the days when we knew how to tailor our own clothes and cook from scratch and all that stuff, they mean when women knew how to do it. For at least the last couple of centuries the employment routine of men hasn’t really changed: wake up, perform basic ablutions, eat, go to work, come home, go to pub, eat, perform basic ablutions, sleep. That’s it. Men have never known how to make apple pies and sew on buttons because the women did it all for them. If we’ve forgotten these simple pieces of knowledge as a society it’s because women have forgotten them, and women have forgotten them because they’ve got better things to be doing.

Why should anyone need to devote themselves to basic pieces of knowledge when it is all readily available for them? Why bother with memorising how to cook or clean or fix things except for convenience’s sake: unless you decide you want to. The rest of the time you can just look it up, and save your time for doing things you want to do.

Let’s forget about an apocalypse or something equally dramatic. Let’s assume we get the Star Trek future where humanity keeps progressing, solving its own problems and social ills and eventually devoting itself to knowledge and ethical pleasure. You think Captain Kirk has a fucking clue how to make an apple pie? He probably doesn’t even lace his own shoes; he’s too busy discovering energy fields and banging space babes.

We don’t need to get by without the internet when it’s doing such a good job for us. It’s supposed to be a time saver, and used properly it really is. That other methods for doing things may have fallen by the wayside is disconcerting but shouldn’t necessarily concern us. It’s a bugger that most graduate jobs are posted online if you don’t have internet access, but I can see how it’s the most convenient method for everyone involved. The solution is to make sure that everyone has access to the internet, so that everyone can take advantage of meritocratic information transfer.

The only downside is this: when information is so readily available, how do we separate what is trivial from what is meaningful?

In days gone by the stuff you had to learn to get through the day was necessary, but trivial. You don’t glory in the knowledge of how to mop a floor. The other stuff, the bits you had to find out for yourself, were what was recognised as important. That these scales have reversed themselves somewhat is a sign of the time we live in. But meaningful information is the same as it ever was: information that improves the life and intellect of its discoverer, either emotionally or physically. I’d bet you’re a damn sight more likely to remember how to make an apple pie if you get some sort of pleasure from doing it. It’s easy to get high and mighty about types of culture, but if an encyclopaedic knowledge of TOWIE makes you the envy of your friends and makes you beam with pride than to hell with anyone who might tell you it’s not worthwhile.

We aren’t taught to learn from the internet, though. Older people scoff at the idea that schools might have classes dedicated to how to use the internet, but that strikes me as very short-sighted. Surely people deserve to know how to make the most of the greatest human development in years? Information is now easy to get at. People are only just beginning to realise that, I think. It’s why the internet has spent the best part of a decade languishing in an intellectual doldrums of pornography and funny cats. But think about how many people use Wikipedia every day. You think that, a hundred years ago, those people would have used a regular encyclopaedia so voraciously? Or that they might own one at all?

I rely on the internet for all my information. But it’s about so much more than cinema timings and Google maps. I didn’t realise how flippin’ useful the whole thing was until it was taken away. So I’m taking more time to read, to go outside in the sunshine. But as soon as I get my internets back, I’m going to go and learn something.

ZOMG POLITICS!!!1!

Mark Twain (wordsmith and admitted coward: thus a solid hero of mine) once said that "in religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are, in almost every case, gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others." (He also once said “all generalisations are false, including this one,” but it’s my blog and I’ll ignore what I like.)

Parliament is back in session, Gordon Brown is long gone, and David Cameron and Nick Clegg (referred to ever after by me as ‘Dave and Cleggo’) are sat up on the Conservative front bench. It seems that, for the time being at least, we have a workable parliament. Whether the coalition will last is something I am painfully under-qualified to comment on, and so we’ll nip any political comment in the bud early on, and move on to the funny lists and things in a moment.

I voted in the general election, and I watched as much of the coverage as I could before I really needed to go to sleep (shout out to my man Dimbleby, the guy’s a machine). I’m not going to comment on my voting preferences, although I hardly kept them a secret from people. This is the first general election where people of my age seemed to have real opinions, and certainly the first one where they appeared to vote en mass. I heard all about it through the most suitable medium for discussing political awareness: Facebook!

Go on, even if you didn’t put who you voted for as your status, even if you ignored Facebook’s belligerent demands to know if you voted or not, even if you went to the pub after work and forgot to vote (or live in Manchester), you were still a little tempted to plaster your opinion on the ultimate social networking forum.

It’s so easy to display your opinion on the internet that you might be forgiven for forgetting that you don’t actually have one! It’s the work of moments to hawk your badly-informed political venom into a public forum, and it’s a lot easier to be vehement in your statements when you’re arguing predominantly with people you don’t know, people you went to school with and will never see again, and friends of your friends’ friends.

With an unstable coalition government the chances of another general election in the near future are high. To help you make the most of this opportunity, here are some tips on how best to show your political allegiance next time around:

Joshua’ Guide to the General Election... on Facebook!

1: It’s probably best if you vote. Some idiot might point out that it’s a little hypocritical to criticise someone else’s voting decision when you can’t commit to your own. If you want to make a big deal out of NOT voting, make sure you let everyone know in advance that you won’t be going to, then remind everyone halfway through that the day that you STILL aren’t going to, and then round it off with a big message at the end, where you can lord it over the sheep that did make it to the polls. Remember, you don’t need to suggest an alternative, or even a cogent reason why!

2: If you meant to vote and forgot, you can always lie. It’s not like people can check. If you weren’t going to vote anyway but you forgot all the preamble mentioned above, just tell everyone you spoiled your ballot! That’ll make you look super active and politically aware, without having to really go into detail or think about things too hard. Win!

3: Make sure you post your opinion on the nearest internet you can get your hands on. To make sure your status doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, why not make sure it contains as much inflammatory rhetoric as you can manage? Why not something like:

[Your name here] thinks that if u voted Labour today the country is DOOOOOOMED!!!

Look at those extra exclamation marks! Check out those unnecessary O’s! Yup, no one’s missing that little beauty off their minifeed.

4: The internet can be a fast moving place. Once you’ve got your super insightful political statement up there, how do you know it won’t get pushed down the list by someone’s party photos or people telling you what they had for tea? Simply keep posting! Now, you can’t have the same status over and over again, because then you’ll look like an over-zealous political nutjob (and we’ll reserve that description for anyone who disagrees with you). Luckily the live coverage on election night provides you with the perfect solution. (Slightly) new things are happening all the time! The results are (slowly) coming in! Now you can repost your status to your heart’s content, only slightly varying the wording to match the latest (minor) development!

5: The following have no place in any arguments you might have over the internet: compassion, good taste, tact, empathy. Replace them instead with: statistics you took from the BBC website, wholesale copy’n’paste jobs from political blogs and of course FULL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS!!!! Try and chuck a general air of smugness in there as well.

6: Remember, Facebook allows you to think your answers through before you write them down. Don’t actually DO that, for pity’s sake, you’ll be completely missing the point.

7: Everyone knows that the only real way to win an argument is to get the last word. Unfortunately you can keep going back to Facebook after you’ve thought up a new pithy quip. There’s only one way round this: you’ll have to stay up later than they can. The problem with election night is that a lot of people have planned to stay up late anyway. Why not consider taking the next day off work, so you can power through into the early afternoon?

8: If you didn’t get the result you wanted, be sure to post the most doom-laden report you can manage. If the Tories get back in next time and you’re a Labour voter, try suggesting that the entire country is going to be strip-mined to support the super-cities where only the top 200 wealthiest people will be allowed to live. If you’re a Conservative, what about envisioning a scenario in which the Greater London area sinks into the sea under the weight of all the illegal immigrants? Remember, the bigger the black cloud now, the more you can say ‘I told you so' later (unless it doesn’t happen, in which case you can breathe a secret sigh of relief).

9: If your astute political appraisal turns out to be incorrect (and it will), then rest safe in the knowledge that, as long as you update your profile enough, no one will be able to find it, come next week.

I hope this guide was helpful. Please do use it, if only to indicate to me who I need to delete from my ‘top friends.’