Call Me Old-Fashioned

In my last entry, I discussed the Internet as a medium that has begun to “swallow” me. I realize now that my discussion neglected the consideration of the human factor in operating the Internet. Yes, there is a machine between you and your chat room buddy; but your buddy is still a living, breathing human being. Electronic texts do not negate the organic nature of face-to-face conversing (or reading and writing in seclusion for that matter); they only throw up another frustrating barrier in this maddeningly fast world.

What has changed? The world is no longer a cozy breakfast nook where coffee can be enjoyed in solitude, without interruption. Rather, constant connectivity has taken over. Technology, such as cell phones, has tied us up with an electronic leash. You call my house and I’m not home; you try my cell phone and I’m not answering; you send me an instant message and I don’t reply; you email and hear nothing back. We are learning to panic when we can’t access this connection. We are learning to not know how to be alone. We are learning to assume that it is a prerequisite to life that you always answer your phone. Whatever happened to just not being home?

Okay, back to the Internet. Let’s tie this all together. I complain because the Internet is no longer my fun-loving friend who can entertain and inform my need to escape. To rephrase a comment on my last entry, “the ‘escape’ is over because the screen can convey thoughts, concerns, feelings and emotions from the people [I was] earlier seeking to avoid. While only friends and marketers could reach [me] in [my] earlier AOL days, now the gatekeepers are there too.” I think the problem here is the blurriness of the line between virtual and reality. What was once my foray into living vicariously through the privacy of a screen name is now my avoidance of reality through being something other than myself.

The Internet in its’ various shapes and forms only does what I tell it to. I don’t have to let online environments into my very real life. I understand the immediacy of my actions when I hit the power button on my laptop. I know I can control the Internet just as I control a pencil moving across paper. The pencil isn’t going to argue with me; the paper isn’t going to redefine itself. When I sit down to write I’m connecting with myself and the world slows down for a minute. I guess I still believe that pencil and paper is a more honest method of control.