Welcome to the Net Neighborhood

Neighborhood

Here in the Net Neighborhood we are all neighbors. As residents, it is up to each of us to treat each other with fairness and compassion.

Questions are Good

No one knows everything, not even me. It is up to us all to ask questions, search for meaningful and true answers, and spread our knowledge when we can. Never be afraid to ask a question, especially when you don’t know.

Not everyone has all the answers

By talking to others, by understanding them, we can expand our knowledge base. We all have a point of view, a way of seeing the world. So talk to others. Share a drink with them. Ask them how their day is. And in learning about them, try to learn something new about yourself.

Hello,

My name is John Carter, but you can call me Mr. John. I would like to formally welcome you to the Net Neighborhood. From your silence I am guessing no one has ever done that before. Oh sure, one site may say hi and another may have a little bubble pop up welcoming you but has anyone taken the time to sit down and welcome you to the Net Neighborhood?

Probably not.

That is downright inhospitable if you ask me.

The Net Neighborhood is huge. It’s so huge that if you were to download the whole thing it would take you over a billion years at current speeds. Now I’m betting that sounds a little scary and that’s okay. Big things ARE scary, you’ve know that since you were a kid. But when we learn about those big things, when we start to understand them, they stop being scary and instead become a friend. That is my hope for the Net Neighborhood.

Together we are going to talk about technology, art, science, movies, and anything and everything else. We are going to learn and understand and in doing so, hopefully, we’ll learn about each other.

If that sounds a little hokey, maybe it is. 2020 has been a hard year for all of us, some more than others, and in the face of such pain it can be easy to look at something like this and think it’s foolish. I’m sure Mister Rogers seemed a little hokey at the time too, but his show and his Neighborhood is remembered to this day as a source of good for the world. Now I will not claim to be the next Fred Rogers, or LeVar Burton, or Bill Nye but I aspire to make a difference in the world, no matter how small.

So, for the first time, but not the last, let me say, “Hi Net Neighbor!”