Recently my wife and I went on a trans-Atlantic cruise. It takes but six days for these big ships to get to land (typically they stop at the Azores or Madeira) and for those six days there is only satellite-based Internet access, for which they charge dearly.
So, for six days, I was without net connection.
It was an interesting experience for someone who has been more or less continuously connected since around 1986, having had the privilege of working at a university over the intervening years. I found I missed two things most: community and information.
Community, of course, means Mythic Scribes, along with other forums, but also means keeping in touch with family and simply the usual traffic of daily business. I'm retired, so at least there's no more work traffic. I was all right with the loss of community, but I certainly felt it. While there are a few thousand other people on a cruise ship, they're all strangers. It was like it used to be, pre-Internet, being in a foreign city. I happened to be reading one of O'Brian's novels and was struck by the radical contrast with a time only two centuries ago when news from home might be months old.
All that was more or less expected. More of a surprise was the information angle. I've noted this before, but it was really driven home over those six days. Living in a world of constant connectivity and deep searches, there's almost no such thing as wondering. Any time I wonder what something means, where a word comes from, how the Titanic compares to the Norwegian Epic (our ship), I just look it up. The condition of not knowing, so prevalent in past generations, is coming close to vanishing. I didn't like it. In fact, it quickly got to the point where I started a list: things to look up once I get connected again.
These two experiences, lasting only those six days, continue to resonate with me. We have transformed our interior world even more profoundly than the external world. Future historians may well mark the advent of the Internet as being as significant--or even more significant--than the Industrial Revolution.
So, for six days, I was without net connection.
It was an interesting experience for someone who has been more or less continuously connected since around 1986, having had the privilege of working at a university over the intervening years. I found I missed two things most: community and information.
Community, of course, means Mythic Scribes, along with other forums, but also means keeping in touch with family and simply the usual traffic of daily business. I'm retired, so at least there's no more work traffic. I was all right with the loss of community, but I certainly felt it. While there are a few thousand other people on a cruise ship, they're all strangers. It was like it used to be, pre-Internet, being in a foreign city. I happened to be reading one of O'Brian's novels and was struck by the radical contrast with a time only two centuries ago when news from home might be months old.
All that was more or less expected. More of a surprise was the information angle. I've noted this before, but it was really driven home over those six days. Living in a world of constant connectivity and deep searches, there's almost no such thing as wondering. Any time I wonder what something means, where a word comes from, how the Titanic compares to the Norwegian Epic (our ship), I just look it up. The condition of not knowing, so prevalent in past generations, is coming close to vanishing. I didn't like it. In fact, it quickly got to the point where I started a list: things to look up once I get connected again.
These two experiences, lasting only those six days, continue to resonate with me. We have transformed our interior world even more profoundly than the external world. Future historians may well mark the advent of the Internet as being as significant--or even more significant--than the Industrial Revolution.