Life Without the Internet, Day 2, Take 3
My computer is crippled. I have no internet access. Yesterday, the family computer, the one all the internet traffic goes through, died. I think the power supply gave up the ghost, since it shut off, then wouldn't turn back on. Windows, ever vigilant, has ensured that the user experience hasn't changed at all, by crashing Editpad twice while I was typing this, and crashing totally a third time. Because of where the phone lines are and everything, I would need a 50' cable or so to hook mine up directly. Lacking that, I have to wait until we can replace the power supply and anything else that burned out. This is another reason we need to get DSL, so things go through the router. That and it's muchly better.
But until then, my computer is crippled. I can't surf the web, get email, chat, or look at fora. Which is most of what I use the net for (and one of the reasons I don't need to upgrade my computer, my needs are relatively simple). I can't rip music off my CDs, well, I can, but they'd have no track information, and entering all the information is far too tedious for me to do it. My antivirus programs can't update, but without net access, they're a lot less relevant. And I can't post to or read LJ, but I'm still writing this, to post backdated when I get access back. As I intend to do with a few other things.
But the genius of important things that fundamentally change stuff is how invisible they become. Like the internet. Or running water. Or electricity, refrigeration, and so on. They utterly change how we live, but they do it invisibly, and fade into the background. That's how real changes work, they become parts of your life, not drawing attention to themselves. And you don't notice them until they're gone. Like the internet. I've become so used to having things like CDDB (well, FreeDB, CDDB turned evil), google, wikipedia, imdb, etc at my fingertips, that not having them feels strange. Like my computer's crippled.
But then again, I've spent a good portion of my life on the internet. We got net access first like seven years ago, which is almost a third of my life. A lot of the pivotal moments of my life involve the net (which is probably sad in some ways, but). I've grown up with the net available, and taken it for granted. It's integrated into my life, and probably only going to get moreso as time goes on, with things getting more mobile, and wireless. Where's my cortical cybermodem and mirrorshades with my own AI assistant built in? Because I so want that.
Technorati Tags: Me, Journal, The Internets, Computers
But until then, my computer is crippled. I can't surf the web, get email, chat, or look at fora. Which is most of what I use the net for (and one of the reasons I don't need to upgrade my computer, my needs are relatively simple). I can't rip music off my CDs, well, I can, but they'd have no track information, and entering all the information is far too tedious for me to do it. My antivirus programs can't update, but without net access, they're a lot less relevant. And I can't post to or read LJ, but I'm still writing this, to post backdated when I get access back. As I intend to do with a few other things.
But the genius of important things that fundamentally change stuff is how invisible they become. Like the internet. Or running water. Or electricity, refrigeration, and so on. They utterly change how we live, but they do it invisibly, and fade into the background. That's how real changes work, they become parts of your life, not drawing attention to themselves. And you don't notice them until they're gone. Like the internet. I've become so used to having things like CDDB (well, FreeDB, CDDB turned evil), google, wikipedia, imdb, etc at my fingertips, that not having them feels strange. Like my computer's crippled.
But then again, I've spent a good portion of my life on the internet. We got net access first like seven years ago, which is almost a third of my life. A lot of the pivotal moments of my life involve the net (which is probably sad in some ways, but). I've grown up with the net available, and taken it for granted. It's integrated into my life, and probably only going to get moreso as time goes on, with things getting more mobile, and wireless. Where's my cortical cybermodem and mirrorshades with my own AI assistant built in? Because I so want that.
Technorati Tags: Me, Journal, The Internets, Computers