However did we cope?

Posted by benmccool / at 5:22 PM / /

Our Internet connection decided to perish on Sunday evening. We got things back up and running today (a big outage fried our original modem) less than 48 hours after going down. No big deal, you'd like to think. Except that it was. A frightfully big deal.

I first started using the Internet (on a regular basis) back in 1998, and considered it a luxury; a non-essential supplement to home-based entertainment. I started using it more as time went by, finding more and more uses as technology improved and cost of usage decreased. Now it's downright indispensable; everything I do evolves around it. Less than two days without it at home caused pandemonium: I was in and out of cafes/friend's homes taking advantage of Wi-Fi connections, and in between trying to reply to as much email as I could using my iPhone's 3G connection. I fell horribly behind with EVERYTHING and I'm only now (virtually) all caught-up. Heidi also suffered: Sunday night's epic BEAT write-up was impossible, and Monday's installment was also severely hindered. We felt so helpless... So fundamentally flaccid.

It's quite scary how technological dependency controls our lives; however did we cope before it got so out of control? Trying to arrange a birthday party without the aid of the Internet (or at least mobile phones) is unthinkable, yet people pre-2000 thought nothing of it. How did it get so bad? How did we become so pathetically dependant? And could it possibly get any worse?

Tragically, I think the answer is a resounding YES.

Watch this technologically-fueled space...

"If at first you don’t succeed; call it version 1.0" –-unknown

Microsoft: “You’ve got questions. We’ve got dancing paperclips.” -–unknown