One Of The Crowd

The Internet. A place where one can find almost anything in the world. A gigantic source of knowledge, a way to share power and send information across all the corners of the world. A chance for the people of the world to come together, while remaining apart - for them to unite, and improve and prosper.

This is the tool that so many of us are lucky to have at our fingertips. Yet how do most of use it? Almost certainly, the majority of users use it to communicate with people that they see every single day. Facebook. MSN Messenger. Myspace. All of these sites are extremely popular - yet they are the opposite of what the internet should be about. Its like going to France to sample the cuisine, and ordering a Domino's Pizza.

Google, a hugely powerful search engine, can give us access to a mass of information that we could access nowhere else. Yet what words feature in the current fastest rising searches on the engine? Facebook. Myspace. Badoo. All social networking sites. These sites claim to be linking people across the world - they don't. They just provide another way of talking to your friends - friends that, probably, fit snugly into your social clique, rather than people who might broaden your horizons.
We could talk to people in Tibet, in Zimbabwe. We talk to people from out offices and schools.

At its best, the internet can bring the world together. At its worst, it can provide terrorists with a recluse. But the way we treat it, its just another phonebook.

I'm one of the Harry Potter generation.

This statement would have made no sense a few years ago, but with the recent phenomenom of the Harry Potter series, it has a clear meaning. The "Harry Potter Generation" can be described as those children who grew up literally alongside the famous wizarding hero. The first book was published when I was 7 years old, and I read the two when I was nine. Hooked, I waited impatiently for the next one to come out - and so it continued. For nine years I grew, and so did Harry Potter.

If you have not read the books then perhaps you cannot understand what I mean when I say that Harry "grew". However, followers of the series will understand this term - with each book, Harry became stronger, older, more mature, and his adversaries more and more serious. When I was nine, he was eleven, battling dangerous plants and putting on the Sorting Hat, and then he was twelve, and this time his friends were in danger. (In the summer before going to secondary school I waited, secretly hoping that I might get a letter from Hogwarts). As I grew, Voldemort returned, and then, at the age of 16, Harry was 17 alongside me, and desperately fighting for his life and the lives of humanity.

That, for me, was the magic of Harry Potter. If I ever had an imaginary friend, then this was him - a boy could do anything he wanted - and yet was so similar in many ways to ordinary children. But, sadly, this can not be repeated for other children. They will start reading, at the age of, say, eight, but then there will not be the year gaps between the books for them to mature like Harry did during his years. They will read about his fight against Voldemort at the age of 9 or 10 - and by this time, unfortunately the books are too complex and subtle for a child to really understand and appreciate the story.

The Harry Potter generation has grown up now - like Harry has. I feel sad that the real magic cannot be repeated for my children - I will encourage them to read the series, of course, but I can't stop them diving into the series and it seems a shame that they will never had the truely magical experience that Rowling created for me.