Need something? Download free app.
- Related Stories
-
My Facebook fetish
October 12, 2007 - Related Blogs
-
Stay juiced even while camping
June 19, 2007 -
Climber makes record cell call from Everest
May 22, 2007
Panic compounded my embarrassment after I discovered that any hope of connecting to the nearest wireless hot spot would be blocked by miles of impenetrable sandstone hills. So for the next week, I "dropped off the grid," going through what might best be described as the electronic equivalent of cold turkey.
Cut off without a tether to my usual cyberlife, here was Mr. Big Shot Tech Reporter, unable to tap into that matrix of instant messages, texting, e-mails, and Web news that has so defined my daily routine for the last decade. Did someone new "friend me" on Facebook? What about my weekly Travelocity updates on flights to São Paulo? And if I wasn't able to bitch in case Knicks GM Isiah Thomas pulled off another boneheaded trade, I'd feel cheated beyond belief.
So much for that master plan. Now I was going to have to play Davy Crockett for the next week in the mountains of Utah without anything more high-tech than a cheap plastic flashlight. I wasn't in any danger--you ever see a laptop dissuade a hungry bear?--but I felt, well, like an addict without his regular fix.
Of course, this is so 2007. None of this would have flummoxed my parents' generation. They talked in person to each other and dialed the phone when they needed to communicate. Or wrote letters. The kind you dropped in a blue metal mailbox. Quaint, but effective.
Maybe that's a red-herring comparison. That generation has passed the baton and, for better or worse, the grid has become the indispensable nexus for communications and commerce in the 21st century. So much so that you can't easily appreciate how hooked in we all are until--poof!--one day you're not.
Less than a full-bandwidth connection to the outside becomes irritating. If you want to turn a pack of journalists into instant grumps, watch what happens when a conference organizer fails to provide dependable Wi-Fi connections for events.
Are there advantages to occasionally dropping off now and then? I can think up a few, not the least being able to reconnect with the way we once were. Consider how nice it once was not to have to endure self-centered blowhards yammering into their cell phones at top decibel levels. Then again, you weren't able to call for help or look up your location via GPS because those technologies didn't exist.
That's the 21st century trade-off, and we haven't been left with much choice in the matter. Of course, you could go the Ted Kaczynski route--not become a "Unabomber," of course, but rather disconnect and decide to refuse the invitation of modernity and all that comes with it. My hunch is that few of you would choose that path for you or your children.
Logging on after my return to the "real world," I'm back to checking e-mail, voice mail, and IM around the clock. But I still miss the uninterrupted silence of fall meadows and dun-colored hills. Maybe next time, I'll "forget" my high-tech toys on purpose.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
See more CNET content tagged:
Turkey,
grid,
Utah,
IM,
cell phone
cyber life is mostly fluff. I see, in my commuting, hundreds of
people yammering on cellphones. When, in the old days, you
had to wait until you got to a land line, and hope the other
person was available at the other end, you really only called
when the topic was important. Now, with instant-on, no blather
is too banal. Same with email, and web-news, for that matter.
The cyber life is like someone who totally immerses themselves
in pulpy novels, reading one after another, seldom looking up.
It's addictive only because it has the illusion of being important.
95% of is not. Regular unpluggings from the grid are good for
everyone. Reality is far bigger than cyber can handle, but you
have to put down the novel and look up to see that.
I have a cell phone that never gets turned on. In fact I don't even have a plan with any company. If I am in an emergency and need to dial 911 it will work. I check the battery once a month to see how it is doing. That is the limit of my use for instant connectivity.
I think the always available to everyone connectivity is a farce. Not only don't I need it but more importantly I don't want it! Call me at work, home or email me. If that doesn't get something to me quick enough then it's my loss. So far I know I haven't missed a thing that could remotely be considered important.
BTW, I have found it helps with sanity to keep the cultural buzz to a minimum. My trick was to eliminate TV about ten years ago--have not looked back and I sure don't miss it, and of late I am finding it harder and harder to listen to 'pumped to me' radio stations--just nothing in either that interests me.
The real significance of the net in this generation of tech is that for the first time since our parent's snail mail and direct face to face communication, we have the ability to get our news and to communicate without the demands of undesirable dribble, i.e., under our control not theirs. A news site is far preferable to the blair of a phony, incredibly simplified meaningless news story backed on both sides by the blairing noise of TV or Radio advertising.
The net, in its innocence has not yet achieved that miracle of marketing stupidity-yet, and when it does, I will walk away from that too.