I’m Hooked Up, Yo

Last Sunday, while visiting my parents after brunch and before heading into town for the weekly MIL visit, I was trying to tell my Mom about a very interesting article I’d read the week before. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with all the pertinent information needed to tell the story completely.

“You know, if you had a computer, I could just email it to you and everyone would be happy.”

“Oh, is that right?” Mom said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve managed for this long without the internet, I think I’ll survive.”

Except the thing is, she really hasn’t. She’s ‘survived’ by depending on the kindness of her family to do research, make reservations and email people on her behalf. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong, it just means she’s surfing vicariously through others; this automatically disqualifies her for the Laura Ingalls Technophobe Pioneer Woman of 2009 Award, you know?

She’s even disturbed at the thought I might get them a Nintendo DS to replace their rapidly failing handheld Solitaire game, for pity sake.

This got me to wondering about my dependence on technology. I mean sure, it’s gotten to the point where a power outage would leave me scratching my head, wondering what exactly to do next. (Answer: probably grab the fleece throw and settle in on the chesterfield for a nap.) I mean, I don’t even cook or clean around the house without the aid of my iPod library or videos courtesy of YouTube. My dvd box sets of various television shows or the ‘jukebox’ stations on the satellite are also great go-tos. But silence? No contact? A distinct absence of software, applications, games, popurl, IM, Facebook, Twitter or email? Makes me itch.

I mean, right now I’ve got four separate email clients open, not to mention five other windows featuring the usual suspects from my Favorites folder. These windows are the first thing I establish at my desk each morning. Hmm, now I have to ask: Is this something I should be concerned about??

Well, consider my social circle. Okay, social circles. Bless the internet for giving me the ability to pick and choose who I let into my life, allowing me to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Piscean in me is thrilled to gather friends from all over the globe and cherish them, each in their own little pigeonhole or very narrow cubby. Back in my early 30s, I tried an experiment where I caused my different worlds to collide, thinking everyone who liked me would also like anyone else who was drawn to me. Let me tell you, George Costanza was right; I won’t be writing any papers about the fallout from that particular experiment any time soon.

A quick poll of my friends reveals the fact that most of them are considerably more able than I in many areas of technology. I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge from my various workplace experiences, will happily help others to overcome issues with the programs I already know and excel at and could probably be considered fearless when it comes to teaching myself new software programs. (This sets me apart from my Mom, who is wary of everything but WordPerfect 5.0 and my Gran, who wouldn’t even lay hands on a mouse.)

But I’ve clicked with these people because we are like-minded. Meaning equally warped…

Now The Mister, he is more attuned to the solitude of his shop. He dabbles in machinery, metal and wood. He works alone and prefers it that way. His forays into the land of the laptop are confined to the few bookmarks I’ve created for him, YouTube and Google. I almost fell off my chair the day he enquired whether he could keep track of his bank account online! I set him up and since that day he’s been as happy as a clam. He still fears for his privacy, but I show him the little lock at the bottom of the screen and he’s mostly comfortable with things. It’s okay that he’s not on the other side of the room, reading my tweets and responding with his own. It might have been nice, but it’s not mandatory.

So what would happen if all of the sudden everyone was gone, reduced to the same status as the Pen Pals of my youth? I shudder to think. My daily contact with many of them keeps me suitably amused, interested, entertained and informed. They contribute to my life, even if it is only through a complex series of ones and zeroes. I manage to see some of them occasionally face to face which further cements our connection, allowing me to assign a certain sense of ‘weight’ to them once I’ve returned home to my monitor. Because of them, I’ve also traveled to places I would otherwise never have visited.

My Mom, for now, will continue to live just around the corner from me, ignorant of the Wonders of the Internet and without her own email address.

But who needs all those extra chain letters anyway?

This has been a Holidailies entry.