Further Thoughts on Going Off the Grid

[commonpeople1]

millionreasons has pointed me in the direction of this post by Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books that perfectly encapsulates my feelings (and possibly yours as well) about going off the grid:

In or around June 1995 human character changed again. Or rather, it began to undergo a metamorphosis that is still not complete, but is profound – and troubling, not least because it is hardly noted. When I think about, say, 1995, or whenever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. Letters came once a day, predictably, in the hands of the postal carrier. News came in three flavours – radio, television, print – and at appointed hours. Some of us even had a newspaper delivered every morning.

It's well worth a read.

There's a link also doing the rounds on Facebook that has made me think of this question about excessive internet use: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. From there, I ended up stumbling on 7 Ways To Be Insufferable on Facebook and I realised how much Image Crafting I've been engaged with[1].  But... aren't we all?  Is it possible not to Image Craft while online?  It feels like a conundrum.

Those two Facebook-related articles aren't explicitly about using the internet too much, but I feel you can infer from them that a lot of malady comes from it.

[1] I was doing this thing for a while where I posted online every Monday morning a photo of whichever cafe I was sitting in, doing a bit of creative writing.  Then, I went dancing with some friends and they said (in the best possible way) that those photos made them feel like shit because they always saw them when they were sitting in their offices, staring at the horrible week unfold in front of them.

Comments

[rockingthemike.livejournal.com]

In or around June 1995 human character changed again. Or rather, it began to undergo a metamorphosis that is still not complete, but is profound – and troubling, not least because it is hardly noted. When I think about, say, 1995, or whenever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago...

okay, i know the writer implies they've chosen the arbitrary date, but 1995 only fits for the internet. mobile phones wouldn't hit mainstream until 99/00. i remember very clearly being 17 in 2000, and being one of the first people in my high school with a cell phone.

regardless of the dates used, she's absolutely right... that period circa 1995-2000 was really the beginning of a huge paradigm shift.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I had a mobile phone in 1993, but no home PC until 2004.

[rockingthemike.livejournal.com]

everybody has a different set of events. i was just highlighting a common denominator, from a north american perspective. most people likely had internet access before they had a mobile phone.