Disconnection Notice

I am part of the Y Generation. It is not by choice but by chance that I am part of this lucky or unlucky cohort that values communication more than anything else. Goods or services are no longer what we trade. Information has replaced the tangible things.

It's been amazing how the Internet is like a pool of information. There is probably no area of human knowledge not stored in the Internet, let alone in Wikipedia. Whatever a person needs to know he just has to type in Google. Besides this, the Internet is also a venue for simulated reality. You can create a restaurant and serve food that you know very well will never really exist. It puzzles me why we do it. Is reality never enough?

One of my professors says that the best way to challenge a thought is to assume a world without it. Let us say that Tim Berners-Lee was not born and thus was not able to create the World Wide Web. What would we be doing now besides writing (or reading) this blog? What would we instead be doing in the 28,178,731 hours we spent doing YM, Facebook or Twitter? Subtract the Internet and mobile phones in all our relationships. It would be safe to assume that we would be human beings who are more in-touch with people. Everything would be a little more personal. We would be writing letters, leaving notes on lockers, sitting in coffee shops and talking about our lives. It would also be safe to assume that some of our existing relationships would not probably even happen.

In 2010, quitting to be part of the social networking web is just not an option, not because we cannot but because we continually get entangled into it. I have long wanted to challenge myself to get disconnected from the world by cutting online and mobile communication for a few days. It seems like a little too idealistic an idea. Sadly, I am struck by the reality that it is quite impossible, especially now that failing to be connected means missing a lot of reminders, news, things that sustain our being in the loop. These are some things not really worth compromising of course, since we are social beings foremost.

Someday I will push myself to do the disconnection thing. It seems interesting to disappear for a while and see what would or would not be gone.

Danne