Turns out the Internet is important

This past week we have been in the process of switching internet services. On Sunday night, our old tap ran dry. It was the mildest of interruptions, thanks to the 5G that kept us tethered to our email and group texts and social media and Netflix. On Monday, the new service would kick in and we’d have faster, cheaper internet.

Except it didn’t. Snafus delayed service until yesterday, and thanks to heavy data use and a cheapie plan on Cricket, my phone basically lost its connection as well. For the first time in years, I was trying to navigate the world without refracting it through the little supercomputer I keep in my pocket. Needless to say it interrupted my blogging, but more than that served as a reminder how much of life is dependent on those 1s and 0s flowing through the atmosphere.

It’s a strange dependency. I look around at the world and it looks the same as it did twenty years ago, before we all had smart phones. There are houses and pubs and cars and people. We shower with real, wet water in the morning and crawl into real, warm beds at night. Somehow, though, an amazing amount of interstitial life, the soft living we do amid these hard surfaces, is mediated by electric information.

By chance, this happens to be the week our local public radio is doing a pledge drive. My Morning Edition workaround is listening to a different west coast station via phone app. Nyet. It’s NBA playoff time, so I like to catch a little Jalen Brunson action in the evenings—on a television that comes through the Internet. Nope. The charger for our six-year-old Chevy Volt has an internet connection that tells it to charge in the evening, when rates are low. Now it is a dumb, unthinking thing, charging the moment it slides into the car’s socket. Go for a bike ride, thrown on the Bluetooth speakers and an podcast. Or not.

Everywhere you look, those physical objects seem to be plugged into an internet feed, including us. And, of course, basically everything I do for my job is mediated by the internet.

The good news is that despite the customer disservice practiced by our major corporations, I have managed to get through this brief internet winter. The experience does leave me feeling somewhat more vulnerable in the world, though. The internet is an intricate network now reliant not just on servers and cables, but objects floating in space. If something were to happen to that network, I’m not sure we’re ready—or I’m ready, anyway—to manage in an analog world. I mean, how would I find out what was on tap at the pub before I visited? How would I even know the pub is open? Madness! Let’s hope I never have to find out. 🤞

Anyway, normal blogging to resume next week.