Brett Farve, Chris Brown, Hayley Williams, Chris Lee, Anthony Weiner…this is getting ridiculous. What part of “media” do seemingly intelligent, talented and successful people not understand when they use social media?

Through social media we are now more connected than ever and the world is getting smaller. Unfortunately we don’t seem to be using these tools in the same innovative, hopeful and future-shaping ways that technology companies portray in their commercials. No, the sleek, progressive world of people reaching out across the globe to share ideas and make the world a better place will have to wait, for we have to snap pics of our naughty bits.

But what do we expect? When D.W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation in 1915, he used the new technology of film to turn racists into heroes. And nearly 100 years later we’ve grown, matured and evolved to create masterpieces like…Human Centipede?

Are we doomed to a future full of nightly news stories about how some politician sent an intern a 3-D, holographic video of his, well, you know? The answer is a confident, yes! Robert Browning instructed us to reach for that which is just out of our grasp. And we will keep doing so. As fast as Silicon Valley can crank out new technology, we will continue to use it for amateur porn. But, we’ll always be striving to be the person in the commercial, Skyping with a fellow human in the mountains of Tibet or the jungles of South America, merging our ideas, creating a new, better world for our children…and TMZ.