Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

9 Websites Which Have Changed My World

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1 Youtube.
I am not musical, but sometimes a song expresses my inchoate spiritual yearnings; reorientates me towards surrender of my life to God, fills my flat spirit again with the fizz of love and devotion to Christ.

I am really grateful for Youtube’s ability to create a playlist of “favouritized” songs, which I can play while doing something else. Listening to old favourites at random helps me remember the mountain peaks of devotion when me first loved that song–and reawakens my torpid spirit. 

What have I listened to today?– “Thirsty” Kutless, (love it); “There is a Day,” Lou Fellingham; “You’re Beautiful” Phil Wickham; “Breathe on Me” (Vineyard) and Strolling with the Lamb (Vineyard). 

2 Wikipedia

I check it several times a week. It’s an amazing source of quick information. 

A great democratization of knowledge, on par with Gutenberg. I wish we had had it when I was younger. I would not have bought Encylopaedia Brittanica (our first purchase as a married couple).

3 Google

Again, a great democratization. Much of the knowledge of the world is online, and can be easily found once one has mastered Google’s Advanced Search. It is so much a part of my life that I feel a bit restless when I am away from laptop or iPhone and cannot rapidly satisfy any little questions, queries or wonderments which come up. 


It is barely a decade or so old, and has already become an indispensable part of our lives.

4 Amazing Amazon
It’s amazing to be able to get hold of pretty much any book you wish–and swiftly, and often rather cheaply.

5 Google Books
Great ways to locate the specific ideas and paragraphs in books without having to buy them.

6 Ebay
I barely use this any more, but I used to.

When I read about the extreme poverty and obsessing over pennies in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” or “A Cab at the Door” or “The Gift of the Magi,” I think, “Ah, today, they would have had an Ebay account.” Ebay allows anyone to set herself up as an entrepreneur starting with the stuff they have which they no longer need. You can set up as a trader with a few quid to buy used books from libraries or charity shops to sell on, for instance. 

Fortunes have been made on Ebay the old-fashioned way, starting with a few quid.

7 Facebook
I used this a good deal for my first year and a half on it, and am grateful to it for helping me recover my writing voice after a 4 year hiatus to establish our publishing company.

I no longer look at it for more than a few minutes a day–less than 5–because I prefer blogging, and because I don’t want to clutter my mind with TMI, and but am grateful to it for the ability to keep a lot of people on my radar screen whom I simply would not otherwise have the energy to keep up with.

With Facebook, you don’t entirely lose touch with your former friends; they are somewhere there on the edges of your cosmos and consciousness, and hopefully, you on theirs.

 It makes things like leaving a city and a church less traumatic; there is a less complete severing of relationships. Your life feels more whole and integrated, without the sadness of shedding a network every time you move from city to city, (or from country to country, in my case. I have lived in a different country in each of the last four decades!!)

You keep in closer touch with your real friends than you would otherwise be able to, and find affinities you would not have guessed at with your acquaintances.


8 Blogger. 
Has had a great impact on my mental and emotional and psychological health, and even social health, as it has led to coffees, lunches and friendships with other bloggers.

 It has helped me verbalize a lot of things, which otherwise might have remained half-formed ideas beneath the surface of consciousness, and to share and refine these ideas by bouncing them of toute le monde, and receiving their comments in return. It is a fascinating, though time-consuming enterprise.

9 The Guardian and the New York Times.
Cannot do without these. I even pay for a NYT subscription once they erected the paywall. I also read Le Monde often–because I am aiming to improve my French, a language I’m oddly in love with!

How about you? Which websites have changed the world/or your world.

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Comments

  3. Hi Jen, If you send me your address to my private email, which I think you have, I'll send you mine. I doubt I'll watch it again.
    I got it for a few quid from Amazon.co.uk, but I guess you might have to pay for overseas shipping that way.

  4. Thanks for the link!! I really hope to get this. The cheapest on Amazon is $34, and there are only 3 sellers listed (non-Amazon shipping). Is the price any better where you are?

  6. Anita, how can I get that documentary?! I would love, love to watch it! I'm off to check Amazon, and if no luck, I'll be asking you again… 😉

    Have a wonderful weekend! I'm off to turn some dirt in the garden… And by the way, I'm reading a book that makes me think of you every time I pick it up: A Countrywoman's Year by Rosemary Verey.

  7. Jen, I don't think we have an Oxford Craig's List. There is a tiny equivalent called Gumtree, and of course Freecycle.
    Watched a lovely French documentary the other night, Etre et Avoir, about a one room French school. Charming!

  8. Must say you've hit the biggies! I read FoxNews most days, as I don't take the paper anymore. I'd have to add in Craigslist, don't know if that's in the UK? We've used it to sell cars and all sorts of things, and have purchased items from cords of firewood to furniture–all locally, and the posting is free.

    I'll have to read Le Monde with you…I'm also trying to improve my French and am also oddly obsessed with the lanugage…