A Week Without the Internet?
October 02, 2010
An NYU professor wasn't able to go a week with only a limited use of the Internet:
I like to think of myself as only moderately, ordinarily addicted to the internet. I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t have a BlackBerry. I don’t have an iPad. I am barely involved with Facebook, and can’t stand Twitter. But as I think about sitting down to write my next book, I do wonder what it would be like to have uninterrupted hours of work – long, luxurious stretches of time, unbroken by dipping into the internet, skimming through an article, scanning e-mail, buying groceries. To be working, in other words, like it was 1975. Dylan Thomas once wrote, “The summer talked itself away,” and I am a little bit afraid of having to say, some months from now, “The fall e-mailed itself away.”
He failed.
I have become less of an Internet-head than before. It started months ago, when I stopped Googling my name. Most bloggers are obsessed with traffic and "Who is talking about me? What are they saying?" Who fucking cares? People will always talk. Let them. Caring what others say about you only empowers them. Nothing anyone has ever said about me online enriched or impoverished me.
But doesn't online reputation matter? That's how everyone rationalizes self-involvement and narcissism. Why not just say, "I am obsessed with myself. I am the most interesting person I know. I must find out if others agree with me." Ah-ha, and now one sees the obsession. If you're really so special, why do you need other people to tell you?
With the ego, there is a thin line between feelings of inferiority and superiority. If you care what others think about you, it's because you are weak and lack self-possession. When royalty would run down the lower classes, it wasn't always to be cruel: It was because they didn't even notice the lower classes. If you fancy yourself royalty, why are you paying so much attention to the peasants?
Besides, life is cost-benefit. Imagine if you spent one less minute a day Googling yourself, and instead spent it meeting people in real life. What would matter more?
If you had unlimited time, engage in frivolous self-obsession. Since the clock is ticking, perhaps there are better ways to distract one's self from the imminent death awaiting us.
On vacation, I spent only 15-30 minutes online - enough to check for "Oh shit" e-mails, and to skim a few blogs. I read 5 blogs. I've kept that habit. If you're not good enough for my 15 minutes, then why should I read you when I have more time? I don't have more time. Because I am living, I am dying.
That literal time spent online became a metaphor for existence, and the scarcity of life. You're going to be dead soon - or if not dead, old. Too old to create new memories, to achieve new goals, to remember last's nights bedside reading.
What are you doing with your 15 minutes?