Benjamin Franklin meets the Internet

In the times following the American Revolution, the founding fathers wondered about the future of the young country. After years of scientific research far beyond his time, Benjamin Franklin finally built a machine that could retrieve an American citizen from hundreds of years in the future. Unwilling to disturb the flow of historical events more than absolutely necessary, Franklin chose to retrieve and interview the least influential personin America at the time: me.

I woke up to find myself in strange room.  I tried to sit up but my head was on fire. 

"Ugh", I grunted, "What's going on?"

I looked around.  There wasn't much in the room.  A bed.  A table.  An elderly man in full colonial attire seated right beside me.

Like waking up to this face wouldn't freak you out.

"Ahh!" I jumped off the bed and tried to run out the door.

"Please, Mr. Moore, don't be scared," said the old man in what would have been a soothing voice if I wasn't locked in a candle-lit room with him, "My name is Benjamin Franklin and I've brought you here from the distant future to tell me all about-"

"Shut up!" I screamed, panicked and still trying to break down the surprisingly strong door, "Just shut up and let me go!" 

The man looked confused and frightened.  "There's nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Moore, please stop banging on my wall."

I groaned.  I hate when I mix those up.

Think you're better than me? Go ahead, spot the door in this picture. I thought so.

For lack of any further confidence in my ability to distinguish doors from walls, I decided to go along with the old man.

"What do you want with me?" I asked.

"I want to learn about your home,"he said, his eyes shining with an intense curiosity about the future of his country, "I want you to tell me what America looks like in your time.  As I said, my name is Benjamin Franklin and I've brought you back to my time so I can learn about the future."

I scratched my head, "Well, ok, but not a whole lot's changed, right? I mean, it's been, what, fifty, sixty years?"

Again, Franklin looked confused.  He sure looked confused alot for a man who invented a time machine.

"I'm sorry, aren't you from the year 2009?"

"Yeah..." I waited patiently for him to do the math, then had an epiphany, "Oh, Benjamin Franklin!  Sorry, man,I thought you were the guy with...you know, with the falling apple and gravity and stuff..."

"You mean...Isaac Newton?"

"Yeah, yeah, Neutron, you got it,"I waved my hand dismissively.

"But he's even further in your past, how could..."

"Sorry, man, I've never been that good at Geometry, you know?"

"But what would Geometry have to do with..." once again, the guy (I already forgot his name again, crap.  Frank?) looked confused.

"Anyway, so remind me, what year are we in?" I asked, trying to relieve him of some embarrassment.

"It is the year 1781 and I am the ambassador to France," he said, all proud and stuff, "which is actually where we are right now."

"1781, huh?  And I'm from 2009, so that's like..." I paused and started counting on my fingers.  I don't really understand math or anything, so when faced with a problem I count my fingers to calm myself down.

"Holy crap!" I bluffed, "Five hundred years!"

"228 years, actually," Frannie(?)said, eyeing me a little suspiciously, "It's been 228 years.  What's happened in the past 228 years?"

"Well, that's pretty broad, you know?" I was stalling, "Give me some specific questions or whatever."

"Is America still a democracy?"Franple asked, "Is there still a separation of powers in government?  Do you-"

"Dude, slow down, maybe you should Google this stuff, I'm not really sure."

"Google?" Fred asked, losing all my respect, "What's that?"

"What, seriously?" I snorted, "Do you guys not have Internet access or something?"

"Maybe it's just something that hasn't been created yet," he suggested, "Could you explain what it is?"

This was good, this I could do.  Who has spent more time on the Internet than I?

(No one.  The answer to that is no one.  Just saying.)

"Oh, man, it's awesome!" Iexclaimed, "It's just this place you can get to on a computer that-"

"I'm sorry, a 'computer'?  What's tha-"

"Hey, don't interrupt!"  I hate it when people ask stupid questions.

Which is just one of the reasons I'd be a great teacher.

"Anyway," I continued, "It's this place you can get to with a computer and there's all these different sites.  Every single one has different stuff on it, you know? It's like if you threw a bunch of books and movies and stuff into a blender, but instead of getting all broken, you could just read and watch them all, you know?"

The Internet.

Clearly, the "French ambassador" had no idea.

"I'm sorry, but a ?blender'?  ?Movies'?  What are you-"

"I dunno, like words and pictures and stuff, god!  You're so stupid, no wonder you're dead!"

There was a straight five minutes of silence.

Then the old dude spoke up, "So it's a place to go for information?"

"Sure, if you're writing a paper or some nonsense, but mostly it's for fun. And, like, if you get stuff from Wikipedia, you can't say it's from there ?cause teachers won't accept that as a source for some reason."

"I know I'm going to regret asking, but what is Wikipedia?"

I rolled my eyes.  "Really?"

He nodded.

I sighed.  "It's like an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

He raised his eyebrows, "Anyone can edit it? How does it publish so many volumes?"

"Dude, it's online.  The edits are instant and stuff."

He gasped.  "You have a source of information that can be instantly edited and distributed?"

I shrugged, "If you want to put it that way, sure."

"But your people must be so advanced!  Anybody anywhere can add to your source of information that can be instantly accessed by anybody else?!"

"Well,yeah, but that's not why you use the Internet, man, unless you're like doing a paper."

"Well what do you do with it, then?"

"There's a lot of cool games and stuff, you know?"

"You use it for...entertainment?"  He seemed shocked for some reason.

"Well, yeah, you know, if you're bored or whatever you can hop on, watch some YouTube videos, talk with friends, whatever."

He stared at me for a second.

I snapped, "Franklin!  That's it, you're name's Franklin!"

Franklin ignored me.

"So how often would you say people used it for information with respect to how often they use it to...what was it,YouCube?"

"YouTube," I corrected, "And, what do you mean, like percentage wise?  I dunno, maybe 90% fun stuff and 10% boring stuff."

"So you have more information available at your fingertips than I do in an entire library and instead of learning you use it to play games and look at entertaining pictures?"

I got the feeling that he didn't think that was a good thing.

"Well, you know, they're really funny pictures," I tried to think, "Like, I dunno, there's this site where people put pictures of their cats online and put funny captions on them..."

Silence.

"But, you know, the captions are misspelled or whatever because cats don't have good grammar, I guess..."

The modern American Revolution?

More silence.

"I-I think I need to send youhome," Franklin finally said, "I need to- I need to think about things."

"Ok, that's cool," I was getting pretty tired of this place anyway, "How do I get going?"

"Just lie down, right there,"Franklin pointed to the bed, "I'll send you back."

I lied down on the bed and Franklin pulled a lever or something. 

"Good luck with the atom bomb!" I shouted as the room disappeared around me.