Being Alone

I write this post from my internet-isolated computer, cut off from the rest
of the intelligent world, stuck in a room in a manor house, in a city I
don't know. One becomes unaware of the extent to which we rely on internet
connections in everyday life. In a way, one of the most difficult things
about moving away from my family home and to university has been, quite
simply, a lack of internet connection. This isn't only for a lack of
trivial connectivity to entertainment and playful websites, but because
being disconnected now means isolated.
Advertising likes us to believe that our mobile phones supply us with
absolute connectivity, with the ability to browse the web, check email, send
SMS messages and call other phones. This is, however, simply not true. My
phone may be able to do all these things, but I with a simple broadband
connection I can do all these things and I can do them for free. To look at
my emails on my phone would cost me almost 50 cents per megabyte which,
though not killing is deceptive. You look at one website and you’ve
downloaded 10k because it's a little text thing, but check out a second one
and there's your money - you've downloaded over one Mb right there and
you're the way to another. My phone, though cute, is internet capable for
me only in emergencies; other than that it's too expensive and too capable
or racking up bills.

I first thought of myself as being geeky for relying on the internet, for
relying on a techie tool to keep in touch but then realized how ludicrous a
view this is; the vector for contact doesn't matter - it's what you do with
it that counts. I'm lost without the net not only because of my inability
to make VoIP calls to friends across the world but also because I can't
research papers, prepare presentations or check up on emailed updates from
my department.

Without email, you're alone. Reading through libraries of conversations
with friends really doesn't replace instantaneous contact. I need to talk
to someone who already knows me - not someone I need to censor my thoughts
for, to spell it out to, to explain every joke to.

In a few weeks, I'm coming home to visit. They'd better laugh then.