I remember the exact moment when the world cracked.

We’d been drinking over at a friend’s house in Cochabamba for a whole long, hot afternoon. Rum and orange juice on a rooftop, with the gentle hum of the market four stories below, an unrelenting sun, little shade and the ice melting quickly in our glasses. After a few hours, our heads started to throb with sun and rum, and we decided to seek shelter in the only air-conditioned place in town: the cinema.

Walking through the town centre towards the cinema, the sun was hot on my head, and the paving slabs scrolled under my feet like a conveyor. I wasn’t conscious of trying to walk, focusing instead on the cool bottle of water that lay ahead temptingly in the cool dark of the cinema. I have no idea how long it took to get there. A couple of minutes, half an hour, I have no idea. I know that when we arrived, we joined a lengthy queue, paid a few Bolivianos to sit in La Butaca, bought clear plastic bags of freshly-made-and-salted crisps from the woman in the foyer, and bottles of icy water and neon boxes of Nerds from the man who sat on the stairs, and headed into the darkened cocoon to relax in the cool air and comfy seats.

It must have been a Saturday, because the cinema was packed with kids, fidgeting in their seats and chatting animatedly to their friends. We were by far the tallest, oldest, whitest, most conspicuous people in the room, and we slumped down in our seats and tried to shut out the noise, sipping on cool water, massaging aching temples.

The film began. The movie was not something I would usually have chosen to see, but it was the only thing showing at the only air conditioned cinema in town, and so we’d plumped comfort over culture, and bought our tickets for Ace Ventura: Un Loco En Africa.

I wasn’t aware of it at first, but as the film got under way, I gradually realised that the world had cracked, and slipped. Instead of seeing the movie unfold, the characters interact, I was aware instead of the fact that they were actors in front of a camera, being filmed by a massive crew. Before each scene began, I could almost see them spring into character, prompted by the director’s shouted “ACTION”. I could picture them doing each scene again and again, could see the actor saying the words, but not the character they were pretending to be. The movie magic had cracked and through the split I could glimpse the complex, repetitive mechanics and processes underlying it.

Perhaps it was because Jim Carrey is particularly OTT in that film. Perhaps it was because all the children around me were shrieking with laughter at something I couldn’t see or comprehend. Perhaps it was a sensation crystalised by the potent mix of sun and alcohol, and sweat cooled onto a sticky back. Whatever caused it, I was fascinated.

I don’t remember the plot, but I remember noticing that the scenes took an age. One scene, in which Carrey needs to escape from a mechanical Rhino via the anus membrane, seemed to last forever. It was excruciating to watch - so painfully, desperately transparent.

The world changed, at that moment. It was not an epiphany, really - because I always knew that cinema was created by actors, directors, editors, and reels of film. This didn’t shock me - but what came as a great surprise was the lifting of the curtain, which revealed the process of putting the film together.

Have you ever seen a soap opera and been able to see the people acting? Not living out their characters, but actors saying words, remembering cues, walking carefully across rooms to find their marks? That’s what happened to the world of entertainment for me after that afternoon in the movie theatre one hot June weekend in 1996. For years afterwards, I couldn’t watch films or TV without seeing the crack. I was just too aware of the mechanisms, the way that the actors were repeating for the nth time the same lines and movements.

Strangely, it has never happened to music with me. I’ve never put on a CD and heard just a bunch of blokes playing in a room. Maybe it’s a visual thing?

Steve Mizrach, someone I’ve admired online for a long time, once said that cyberspace is the place where your attention is when you’re watching a movie, which is a definition I love. You’re not on the beach with the boy and girl in love, but neither are you quite in your plush seat holding a bucket of popcorn the size of a large man’s head. You’re somewhere else. It’s the same place your attention is when you’re on the phone to someone you love. You’re not exactly here and you’re not quite there, you’re somewhere else in limbo.

When the attention isn’t there, when we’re not drawn into this nebulous concept of cyberspace, perhaps that’s when we see the cracks, when we glimpse the mechanics of the world instead of being distracted and absorbed by the curtain.

The web feels more real. When I’m reading a book, I don’t think about the author tapping away on their typewriter (/ibook), even if it’s poorly written. I don’t imagine them scratching for similes or phrasing and rephrasing until each sentence sings. When I read on the web (read as opposed to watch or look or interact), I am hugely conscious that there is a real person behind each site, each carefully crafted bit of content, each paragraph and rant and quirk and comment.

The web is a personal space, a people space, a populated space, and it shows. There is no curtain, or if there is it’s totally transparent.

The web feels real and (while sometimes dull or frustrating or irritating) perhaps because I know that it’s created by passionate, creative and curious people in bedrooms and offices and college computer labs - I know, I’ve seen you, I’ve been you - it doesn’t come crashing down to disillusion and disappoint when the cracks begin to show, when we suddenly see the puppeteers behind the curtain, operating the machinery.

Those cracks are what makes the internet interesting.