I am typing this article. Offline. Yes that’s right; while I wait for the connection to come back online I am typing this. Offline. See even the word “offline” makes me cringe slightly. I am feeling both helpless and angst at the moment. Work is being delayed; I can’t communicate with my subordinates, supervisors, colleagues and friends. I can’t even see if I have any important emails that might require my immediate intention. What if it’s a pertinent email from my boss? Or from a client?
And that’s when it hit me – how our lives are so dependent on the internet. It used to be the case at one point where our lives were dependent on computers, when IT skills, programming and office application skills were essential in getting a job. Parents would send their kids for computer classes in the hope that their kids would be ahead of the curve. Schools offered a new extra-curricular activity called speed typing where they teach you to type proficiently on a keyboard and you would compete with friends to see who could type the fastest in class.
Today it’s the internet. The internet has become such an integral part of our lives that without it we feel helpless. Some even lose their minds. I remember attending a church council meeting a few weeks back and the committee consisting of the ‘elders’ were deciding on the venue of next year’s annual retreat. Upon deciding on one of the venues that was proposed, one elder shot up and said “eh no la, that place has no 3G connection! Cannot cannot!”. I silently was amused and chuckled to myself when I heard that feedback. But it also illuminated another deeper underlying reality – we are becoming more and more internet-dependent.
Man has been wired to communicate. This primordial activity has been hardcoded into our DNA to ensure one essential thing – survivability. Whether its paintings on the cave, fire signals, pigeon carriers, , telephone paper cups and now instant messaging (IM), man since antiquity has always felt the need to communicate. But somehow as I reflect back, somehow the internet, while designed to improve communications in some way has made man more isolated than ever before. I am often reminded of the dystopia movie Surrogates, where once the system is wiped out, the REAL people start coming out of their doors and start to actually have REAL conversations with each other. This phenomena actually happened at work a few months back when the connectivity at my workplace was down and up until that point the only sound you could hear was just the hammering and typing of the keyboard. At once when the internet was down, people started to look outside their cubicles and the first words they probably would have uttered to their otherwise-ignored colleagues was “eh, can you connect to the internet?”
Let’s face it we have indeed become slaves to the internet. From levelling up in Candy Crush, to communicating with our besties and conducting businesses and work with our clients, the internet has revolutionized everything that we do. I had a friend recently telling me how google has changed a life! And like her, it has had a phenomenal impact on almost all aspects of our lives.
And sometimes, that can be quite a scary thought…and yes I am still not connected at this point even though I have completed this essay.
