Thoughts on the Internet

Last week, I spent two days without Internet access at my fingertips, one day at home, one day at school. Now mind you, these were separate days, so I was never completely without Internet access; I just didn't always have it when I wanted it. Here are just some random musings on the experience.

• Being without the Internet makes me nervous. I get this jittery feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm not sure what I'm nervous about--missing out on something, I guess.
• I use the Internet for lots of little things that I don't even think about but I miss when the Internet is down--checking the weather, for example. Remember when you had to watch the news to see the weather forecast? Online forecasts really are a luxury.
• I send a lot of email. A lot.
• Without the Internet, my computer seems almost worthless. At school, attendance and grades are both Internet based, so with Internet access, there was really no reason for me to even turn my computer on.
• I have lots of habits that are based on the computer: I eat my breakfast while checking email. I feed the baby while reading blogs. Every time I walk by the home computer, I check for new mail. At school, when I hear the "ding" that tells me I have new email, I start thinking of reasons to walk by computer to see if it's important.
• What did we do before high speed Internet? It's only been four or five years since we got rid of dial-up. I can't imagine going back.
• When I graduated from high school, most people weren't even using the Internet. I remember using gopher to search on line. Everything was text based back then. Netscape Navigator (remember that?) was groundbreaking. My email was text based for years after that. It seems like a whole different world.
• My husband contends that social networking sites make people anti-social. What he means is, "Get off that computer and do the dishes."
• I haven't been on Facebook very long, and I'm already starting to think of my life in status updates. Pathetic, huh?