Life without the internet
I’m very happy to announce that my internet is back online and working great! I don’t know all the technical details of what went wrong, but from what I gathered, it was a complicated problem that involved a lot more than just the local DSL network around where I live. Fortunatley though, a tech that came out today to look at the problem is the one who got it figured out, and managed to get some strings pulled to get us back online today. If it wasn’t for him, we’d be waiting until sometime next week to get our internet back.
But this whole experience of not having any internet service for an entire week got me thinking. It wasn’t too long ago that the internet was in its infancy and people were communicating the "old fashioned way" (ie. telephone, snail mail). In fact, I remember in my younger days dialing into these bulletin boards (called bbs) that people would run from their home. Once logged on, you could exchange messages with others. How exciting! There were no fancy web pages. No fancy email. And no high speed connection. But that was okay, because everything was text-based and I couldn’t stay logged on for very long because I was tying up the phone line.
Today, the internet is everywhere. It has become so meshed into my daily life, I took it for granted. And when the DSL connection died a week ago, I really felt lost. I also suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands. So, I ended up doing a lot of reading and practiced my guitar some. But despite these other things that kept me occupied, I still felt the constant urge to check my email and all the other sites I regularly visit.
I don’t want to turn this post into a diary of "My Week without the Internet". I just want to point out how most of us don’t even think about all the things we go online for and how it’s so intertwined with our daily lives.
My next post will be back to the usual subject of literature, publishing and writing. And I’m afraid the June e-newsletter will be delayed. Tomorrow is June 1 and I’m nowhere near ready to send anything out. This last week has thrown me out of the loop, so I need a few days to get back into it and get organized. But don’t worry, this newsletter is going out come hell or high water.
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Read More: Misc., The Interwebs, Writing
