It is said that you realize the importance of something only when it is taken away from you. I had never thought that I would say the same thing about the internet some day.
It’s 23:15 as I write this, and since 19:00 hrs approx. my home internet connection was not working. Now I am not really a chat or email freak, and I really don’t keep hitting refresh on Facebook just to see what everyone in the world is up to; but just the inability to go online IF I wanted to, was enough to make me uncomfortable in the last four odd hours.
Not a good sign. Though certainly not as bad as complete reliance upon the facilities that internet provides, but enough to give that feeling of missing something vital, like a phone signal. There were no important mails of course (it is Sunday afterall), no long-lost friends who were waiting desperately on the other side of the chat servers, no girlfriends on the edge of breaking-up at the slightest hint of non-sincerity, and no breaking news that would become obsolete in four hours, but still the effects of that funny feeling lingered on.
And then the huge sigh of relief when the status on my laptop showed “Connected”. As if I were a drug-addict, and somebody had just handed me the much-needed whiff. But one thing I am sure of. I am not alone in having these addicted kind of feelings. The world is a much smaller place today, and being disconnected from it for even such a short span is not an idea that today’s generation is used to. And the situation is only going to get much much aggravated with really high speed internet coming up on all phones all over the world.
I wonder if someone would survive for even four minutes being “offline” when that happens. But right now, let me go online and publish this….
