This thing is going to be huge.

I am, I must admit, a bit of a skeptic.

I’m a glass-half-empty guy. I see the dark clouds before the silver linings. I gag a little when someone says “It’s all good.” It’s just who I am. And frankly, it’s served me pretty well. My Told you sos far outnumber my Gosh, Bob, you were rights. For whatever that’s worth.

So when something truly promising skitters across my cognitive windshield, and one eyebrow pops up, and I blurt an inadvertent Scooby-Dooish “hrrr?,” and I don’t immediately relegate it to the Things They Say Will Be The Next Big Thing But Will Actually Be Forgotten By Next Week pile, well, you can bet that it’s attention-worthy. At least from me.

Take this internet thing, for instance.

Of course, I’ve been hearing about it for years. Once exclusively the domain of the military, then large corporations, then communications behemoths, now it appears as though everyone has access. Can this be real? A truly global, democratized digital network? Unfettered access to the depth and breadth of human knowledge?

This is going to be big. Huge. This is going to change everything. We’re going to need a bigger boat.

Just imagine…

No more sound-bite news headlines spoon-fed to us with corporate and media agendas, or entertainment gossip masquerading as news. Now we can dig deep, and get serious, in-depth coverage on important issues written by true journalists.

Gone will be the days of wasteful water-cooler chitchat, inane gabbing about last night’s restaurant meal, the passing around of snapshots of pets and kids. Instead, people will be involved in important human discourse, using social networks designed to facilitate cross-cultural exchanges of meaningful ideas and thoughts.

Gone, too, the days and dangers of widespread rumor, urban myths, political misinformation, medicinal quackery, rewritten histories, false science, and government propaganda. Because the truth, the facts, ma’am, will be out there, available to one and all with the click of a digital button.

Hours upon hours of mindless television watching? Whiling away precious time on game consoles? Not anymore. TV remotes and game controllers will be mere remnants of a bygone era… artifacts of a time before sharing concepts and knowledge became our global pastime.

I have, uncharacteristically, such great hope. This internet thing… it’s bound to usher in a renaissance of enlightenment. As we drink from this unique well of knowledge and truth, and collaborate with it, and add to it, our very nature as a species can only ascend to a hitherto unparalleled intellectual nirvana.

The skeptic in me has been silenced. Gosh, Bob, you were right.

And now, I must go. I have to Instagram this spectacular maple-bacon gorgonzola burger I had last night, watch the HuffPost collection of the 10 best cat videos, catch up on Caitlyn Jenner’s tweets, and my Mom wants to Skype about a rash she got at her Sarah Palin rally.