Disconneted?

(Written on Tuesday October 5, 2010, about a week before I had regular internet again.)

So it’s been two and a half weeks since I’ve had a steady internet connection. In an objective reality, that shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but in today’s fast-paced and always-on internet society, that timeframe seems to lie somewhere between an eternity and an epoch. I’ve been travelling (to Iceland and France) and so there’s been a lot to do and see, and so I haven’t felt a particular lack. I haven’t been travelling alone either, so I haven’t been lonely either.

To say I haven’t have internet would be a lie as well, but my connection has been limited to the free Wi-Fi at cafés and the likes of McDonalds, which lends itself to quick email checks but not heavy surfing. But I’ve started to settle in here in my new home and have started a new job. Consequently, my list of ‘needs’ for the internet has started to grow: I need a phone (or Google Voice or Skype) to find out what mail has come back home, to phone my landlord and to phone my credit card; I discovered that Google Image Search has turned into my clipart library; I need Google to find a car rental place in town; I rely on the internet to plan flights and hotels (I have two weeks vacation at the end of the month); I didn’t pack my French-English dictionary to save weight on the premise that I would have access to something online; I miss having the weather forecast; and let’s not forget the hundreds of Megabytes of software updates that are waiting for me when I finally reconnect.

In short, I have discovered that I use the internet for far more than simple text-based communications.