With three months down at texturemedia and one to go, I’ve been doing some reflection about my experience here: what I’ve learned, what still flies over my head like an overthrown frisbee, and how I can make the most of what little time I have left. Standing at the forefront of the interactive age as part of a company leading the charge, I consider myself extremely lucky. If anyone is in a good position to understand the digital sphere, my name falls near the top of the list. But because the Web evolves at an exponential rate, it seems like all I can do is play catch-up. And what’s ironic is that every second I do, and no matter how hard I sprint, I’m still losing ground.

That’s daunting whether you’re an intern, a long-time employee, or anyone else, for that matter. No one knew the Internet would do what it has done to media, globalization, information acquisition, humanity. I can’t even speak accurately as to what it’s doing now except growing.

Yet despite a slipping grasp on what I know to be true about the Internet, I’m not deterred by information overload. Quite the opposite, in fact. Agencies like texturemedia make content more presentable, more easily digested, more navigable, so that the ambitious learner in me can sit down at the computer several times a day without feeling inundated by Web content. I browse, I log in, I hunt like I’m getting paid by the click.

That’s what it takes to stay competitive in this industry. You have to be a net junkie, ever-ready for your next fix.

Twenty years ago, no one was a net junkie. Just look at how far college has come: at one time, students shuffled impatiently through library card catalogs, found research on tangible pages of Encyclopedia Britannica, scribbled essays on lined paper, and fumbled with rotary phones. It was a time when social networks weren’t MySpace and Facebook; they were not books at all, but bodies that gained popularity by shaking a lot of hands. I heard about all this from my parents and teachers as they wore expressions of nostalgic disbelief. “Golly. Things sure have changed,” they said.

Today, however, mobile phones, super-light notebook computers, and desktops at virtually every place of business mean that almost no one is out of range. Recently released data from eMarketer shows that 64% of Americans (184.6 million) aged 3+ are online. I imagine even some of those 3- kids are sitting on Dad’s lap surfing away as well. They’re not child prodigies; that’s just the way we’re raising our children. Welcome to the 21st century.

So what I hope people get from all of this is an appreciation for the most outstanding resource the modern world has ever known. The Internet is man-made. It’s ours. Everything online came from someone looking to answer a question, to offer an idea, to solve a problem. And maybe, just maybe, that someone was an intern.

Justin Prugh, Intern