For me it is like walking through some exhilarating global weather system, an interactive one at that. I see some article that does not particularly interest me and it is like a raindrop against my skin or a passing breeze: I am aware of it but in a moment it is gone and forgotten.
And then I see something that interests me, like light from some distant sun touching my face through the shifting clouds of data. Or then suddenly I stumble upon something that angers or startles me, like a lightning bolt hurtled up into the sky from New York or Wellington or Belgrade or Delhi or London, only to strike the ground near me, illuminating everything for a moment and shocking me with its force.
The Internet makes me feel like I am some luminous being working a magic device that transports me up from my little corner of the Balkans until I can not only look down over the sound and fury of the whole world, but like some pagan goddess with my shimmering wings powered by Blogger.com, fling my own thunderbolts back down at it, watching them strike in London and Warsaw and Calgary and Athens and Pretoria.
The Internet is so much more than the slow moving dead text of yesterday, something remote from yourself held at arms length figuratively and literally. It is the seething, howling, singing, snarling voice of the global gestalt that surges through you and carries the sound of your own voice away with it to unseen ears on the other side of the world. It is utterly intoxicating.
