outage

[mrissa]

There are two standard cultural narratives about being unexpectedly deprived of internet, at this point in our relationship with that piece of technology. I bet you'll recognize them both.

The first one goes: I didn't realize how much I was missing by looking at the internet until we had an outage and then I stopped and smelled the daisies and talked to my family and my life was so much richer and I resolve to do without the internet loads of times going forward yay. The second: I didn't realize how dependent I was on the internet until we had an outage, and then I was frustrated and agitated and could not cope and oh golly I guess I have a real problem here and I resolve to do without the internet loads of times going forward yay.

You can see why these are stories, I guess, because "I already knew this thing and lo here it is" is not much of a story. Except when it goes against the standard cultural narrative, in which case sometimes maybe it is.

We had a long internet outage yesterday morning, and it completely disrupted my morning routine. Usually I read social sites and news of various types while I'm reading my breakfast in the morning, and I use streaming video to watch something during my workout. Yesterday I checked my phone to make sure there was nothing urgent, read the newspaper with my breakfast (instead of with my lunch as usual), and watched video on DVD with my workout. In short, I coped just fine, there was no failure of cope, there was not even a moment where I wailed, "But what will I do?" But it was an annoyance, and I feel fine about that because I have considered how I use the internet in my morning routine and am happy with it. The internet is a tool, I'm happy with what I use it as a tool for, there does not need to be a ritual chanting of "fie upon you, get away foul internet."

I have also said several times recently that I want to improve my relationship with doughnuts. Specifically, I currently eat a doughnut between zero times a year and twice, and I feel that three or even four doughnuts in the course of a year would be superior. People are making lots of fancy gourmet doughnuts these days, and I feel that trying a few more of them on rare occasions would improve my life in a tiny but measurable way. I do not have to participate in ritual decrying of doughnuts as bad for me. Of course they would be bad for me if I was eating tons of them all the time. But I think that my current doughnut count is actually slightly low. As a sometimes food, sometimes could come around more often. Not a lot. Just a little.

So...I think it's worth noticing, when the shape of the narrative isn't fitting. I think it's worth noticing when the story doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I get on the internet in the morning, I check in with my friends, I read a bit, and I'm good with that. I'm happy with my tools. I hope you can be happy with yours too.

Comments

[davidgillon]

There's an aspect of pushing "the internet is the death of social interaction" that a lot of people, especially its advocates, fail to recognise. It's the baseline assumption that online interaction is somehow less valid. But for some people, predominantly disabled, the only social interaction they're able to access on a daily basis is online, and the value of that interaction can't be underestimated. And when people proclaim that online interaction somehow isn't real, what they're saying is that the interactions of disabled people don't have any value. But try getting them to acknowledge that point.

Thanks to the net, I'm in daily contact with family, friends from university, and an awful lot of people I've never physically met, but who are just as much friends. I talk to them far more often than to my physical neighbours.

[jesse_the_k]

Mmmmm. Doughnuts. What qualifies as "fancy gourmet"?

I agree that our standard internet narratives depend on the net being a Strange New Thing. No longer the case, at least not for me.

I wonder what moral panics arose around the telephone?

[mrissa]

I think of fancy gourmet doughnuts as the ones with flavors I can't automatically think of myself. I enjoy a good chocolate-glazed Bismarck, for example, or an apple fritter, but I could readily think of those. The fancy gourmet doughnuts will come up with combinations that are specific to the bakery in question.