If geeks love it, we’re on it

Being a bit of a Luddite isn’t such a bad thing after all

Being a bit of a Luddite isn’t such a bad thing after all

I guess you could say that I’ve always been a bit of a Luddite, but I never really realized how dependent I am on the internet (via my girlfriend’s computer, of course) until I recently moved and was forced to go a week without it. I literally use the internet for everything. (Ironically, I had to Google ‘Luddite’ to find out what it meant after I received a letter from a good friend of mine saying, “Sorry for ruining your hippie, socialist, Luddite, Buddhist lifestyle with this newfangled phone.”)

I don’t even know how people lived before the internet. You know, the days when you found a job through a friend who knew someone who knew someone who was hiring or an ad in the classified section of the newspaper. (Do they even have those anymore?)

I mean, we found our new apartment on Craigslist, which is where I also found my job three years ago. Instead of wasting time waiting in line at the DMV to change our address, we spent five minutes doing it online. Same with USPS. I use Moviefone to see what’s playing in my area, and IMDb to see if anything’s actually worth watching. (My girlfriend won’t bother seeing anything rated under 7.0.) Anytime I need some computer/tech-related advice (which, admittedly, isn’t all that often), I head over here to Icrontic. Hungry and looking for a good breakfast place in southeast PDX (that’s Portland, OR for those of you not in the know)? Yelp is good for that. (It’s also good for finding dentists.) And if I’m ever in need of a phone number, directions, to know if a word is spelled correctly or a quick education on the labour theory of value, there’s the all-knowing Google.

Yep, the internet has made my life a lot more convenient. Thanks to Facebook, I spent Christmas eating an amazing dinner and sipping on some Oban at a friend’s house instead of alone, gnawing on a veggie burger from BK (couldn’t afford to visit my family back in MI), and I never even knew their phone number. But, as I’ve also come to realize, relying so much on the internet has had it drawbacks as well.

I’ve noticed, for example, that my spelling has really gone downhill since I began relying on Google and spell check. I seem to make far more mistakes than I used to. (My theory is that my brain is using the internet like an external hard drive, dumping my vocabulary for simple HTML codes and logical fallacies to throw at people who are wrong on the internet.) I’ve noticed that my attention span has suffered as well. I tend to skim newspaper articles (when I bother to read them) way more than before, and I have trouble reading a book for more than an hour. (I used to be able to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a few days.) I even find myself getting irritated when I can’t hit ‘control F’ to find something I read a few pages back that I want to look up again.

But it hasn’t just affected my memory and attention span, it’s affected what passes for my social skills these days too. As shy as I was before, I have an even harder time interacting with people in real life social situations since discovering the world of social media, where I can take hours to perfect a witty comment from the anonymous safety of my own home (or local coffee shop); not to mention the fact that in real life, I don’t have the luxury of deleting the dumb things I say before someone has the time to read them. Plus, it’s way easier to just ‘like’ something than it is to have an actual conversation.

The good news (or the bad news depending on how you look at it) is that I’m not the only one who’s noticed these things. (I thought I’d simply crossed into ‘old geezer’ territory). Just the other day I heard a story on NPR about a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly (subtly titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”) that reaches a similar conclusion. And you know what—it’s got me thinking that being a bit of a Luddite isn’t such a bad thing after all.

As convenient as technology can make our lives, I think there’s a limit to how much we can depend on it until it becomes a psychological crutch—one that we know we don’t need, but one that we’ve become so dependent on we can’t seem to function without it. Convenience is a type of pleasure, mostly in the Epicurean sense of being the absence of displeasure, and the key, I think, is to find a happy medium between technological asceticism and becoming the human equivalent of the Borg. I guess the moral of the story is that you really can have too much of a good thing; although I’m sure most people have already figured this out by now.

Comments

  1. Cliff_Forster
    Cliff_Forster Jason,

    This article could not have been more timely for me. I just got back from a weeks vacation at the beach where I intentionally disconnect for a week. I have been doing this mid July for years. No laptop, no smart phone, not even a trip to the beach internet cafe. I just go dark.

    100% therapudic and and endorsed by me. Its not to say that I want to be without the internet, quite contrary, but a week a year to slow down and disconnect so you can re connect with the people that directly surround you, its extrodinarily therapudic.

    Even if just for one day, turn the computer off, put the phone down, and instead of typing to strangers go say hello to one somewhere, instead of fixing a problem for them across wires go over their house and do something with them, instead of planning everything to the letter with exact show times and directions, just get out there blind and explore. Surprise yourself for a change. Its good for ya.
  2. fatcat
    fatcat I try to spend at least one week a year totally disconnected from the internet. Usually, I just head to visit my parents in Vermont. I find that week to be very relaxing, either hiking in the mountains or just sitting on the back patio watching the sun set over the lake. Everyone needs this.
  3. Gate28
    Gate28 Being from the first generation raised on the Internet, I can honestly say that I get nervous when I'm not connected to it. I don't find it relaxing or relieving to be disconnected, I find it nerve-racking or almost frightening, I guess, it's a hard feeling to explain.

    It's not really for social reasons, I've only had a Facebook or anything like that for a little over a year. I suppose its like if something major happens in the world it may be days before I read about it or see it on TV. Hell, there's a webcam set up watching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. How would something as traumatic as that be received or reported on if the Internet doesn't exist?

    I've got a bit of a story: About 4 years ago I went on vacation to south Florida, and I didn't take any electronics that could connect to the Internet with me. The day after I left, a good friend of mine was murdered. I was gone for over a week and I didn't hear about it until I got back, when I had missed the memorial. If I had known something like this had happened, I would have come back from my vacation early to go to a memorial.

    I guess for me it's really just about knowing when and how things happen that makes me able to be comfortable on the Internet and call a community like ICrontic my home on it.
  4. Jokke
    Jokke I'm a disconnected from the internet for three out of six weeks. Being on a boat, way up in an icebelt really kills any sort of connection..
  5. litenku
    litenku I was thinking about the situation Gate28 described. Back even 15 years ago, that sort of thing would have happened "all the time". Unless you left a forwarding number, there was no way to get back in touch with the people around you 24/7.

    I started writing a long rambling piece about what I thought about that situation, but then realized I was being kind of a cold jerk, so I deleted it and wrote this instead.

    I suppose being a Luddite isn't all great...
  6. GHoosdum
    GHoosdum Well written article, Jason. I just took a week's vacation, most of which was spent without the internet. The day I traveled out of town I even spent without a phone, since mine had broken the day before. After two days out of communication, I was itching for some social media. After two more days, I was fine without.

    I think you're 100% correct that a balance point is necessary, lest we rely too much on an external brain and too little on what rests between our ears.

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!