Dependence

In the last few months I have gone through the agonizing process of acquiring the internet for my new house. Orange aren't the best at sorting things out quickly...and the flipping engineer hooked up the landline to a dead line!! Clever much?!


The point is that I went without the internet for around a month. This made me realize how much we depend on the internet, social networks etc. The few moments when I had access to the internet at friends houses and coffee shops where like coming up to the surface to breathe. Without the internet I felt like I was drowning in a sea of isolation and my world suddenly expanded. Our world is contracting, we scarce have to leave the house now with our friends, banks, shops, work, news, information, entertainment all at our finger tips a few key strokes away. I asked myself...how did people find out information before? They had to walk, talk and actually put in a bit of effort. 


We are used to having things so quickly and for such a minimal amount of effort that surely we don't value what we have as much. If you work for something, you enjoy it that much more, or alternatively if you make a mistake you learn the lesson, because of the effort you put in. Facebook is an excellent example of this. Currently I have 584 "friends" on Facebook, many of them are genuine friends who I love to spend time with and strive to keep in contact with. However there are many "friends" on Facebook that I haven't spoken to in years. There's that girl from high school, the same one that I never spoke to in high school, the same one that I haven't spoken to since  high school and the same one I wouldn't clock if I walked past them on the street. Another thing, you know when you "chat" with someone on Facebook and all is hunky dory....and then you see them in person and conversation disappears like a fart in a gale! Its totally different! Our perception of "friend" is being twisted by the internet.


Imagine if the internet died worldwide, forever. We would become fitter, more communicative (in person), place value on things that mattered and be really poor for ages because the world economy would be in the bin. Once more people would want to explore the world and its mysteries rather than just look at it on Google Earth and swiftly return to blasting away a few virtual people from across the world on COD.  


We depend on it...a lot! I challenge you, write a letter not an email the next time you want to catch up with someone, give them a call rather than "chat " to them through a keyboard.


Right I'm off to do my Christmas sopping on Amazon...LOL