I’ve been thinking for a while what should i write about my relation with the Internet.

Ultimately is something really natural and normal to me, something i take for granted. But is not that easy right?

There is something precious beyond any assumption, something that you don’t really know or understand completely, that sparks curiosity and makes you go after it. Maybe we kind of love what we don’t know…and probably Internet it is so important to me, because it has been my entry point to unknown people, music, places, myths, words, ideas, processes and more important, possibilities that shaped a big part of what i called my world.

A fair amount of my Internet is made of things and skills i learn to create things. In the beginning it was trough irc chat rooms where i learn about animation, later on i got caught in the forums to find out less about technique and more about ideas - which were always surrounded by music and this is how i eventually end up at Dirty - a forum about where my fascination about image and music, expand to unknown levels to me.

Since i missed something kind of important like university - Internet and my friends at my favourite brown forum where in charge of supply lots of information to find about what i liked and needed to know. Dirty.org was like a playground full of relevant things for me, where i discovered naturally about the simple economy of the Internet where you share and contribute in order to play. They would give me space in the server and i would try to create something nice for the site. So i find out how to make html so i can put something good in there. I would learn how to use music software so i can make a nice mix for them. I naturally learned more english (I even learned to work harder so i could buy a plane ticket, to join the the dirts in a festival and actually hang out with them!). So i visit new places outside Mexico following music, ideas and people i met through dirty and i eventually move for real to one of those places.

In that place there was so much more that i didn’t know and everything was set up to get lost on it. Priorities changed, there was so much around! The idea of making, modifying, hacking, programming inside such system like New York, blew my mind. Working only in the screen wasn’t the only option and i changed it all for a pair of scissors, sewing machine and the street. I didn’t know how to do it though. Lucky me… the people around me knew how and shared it, is not a coincidence these people were very into Internet.

Obviously i never thought about the “the Internet” in this way before. I learn to value it and keep their cycle moving actively. I’m still trying. Maybe i wasn’t thinking in all the content of Internet at all. Being a pupil of the Internet before being a pupil of an actual teacher, blind me a little bit: generate, exchange, filter and recycle information was something natural to me.

I bumped into the right people -once again trough Internet- and i here i am trying to articulate what it means the fact of having the chance of learn all of what i’ve been interested in, even if i didn’t have the privilege of a formal education. First at all, i guess i am so super lucky.

Even if i’m at the risk of sounding exaggerate and cheesy, i think that my Internet it’s been like a fuel to me. And since i took it for granted, the only way to preserve it now is by acknowledge that a fairly big amount of what i think is called “knowledge”, comes from people that understand things in a different way than me and unleashed on the Internet, from those who talk to me about the Internet itself, the ones that posted a link that was useful to me, that took the time to upload some instructions i could follow, that put up a mix with some music i like, that took the time to reply my question in a forum, that made a software that i could download or a tool i can use, that chat with me all night and guide me step by step to bring back my AMIGA, from the nicknames that stopped chatting and showed up in a bar for a party- and later on to a wedding!-, from the ones that shared their server with me to host jpg remix battles, from those that invited me to be part of an on-line lab…

It comes from all the people that know something i don’t - and inspire me to dive into the Internet, to keep learning how to create some more fuel - to put back into the world.

Geraldine Juárez lives in Mexico City and in streets and nets all over the world working to unveil the exciting possibilites of the end of the world.