48 Hour Cyber Sabbatical
February 10, 2009
I haven’t been online since Saturday afternoon. I haven’t wanted to be online. I get like that sometimes. Normally I’m all about being connected but every now and again it feels weirdly invasive, as if every Twitter Tweet, Facebook status update, and email is another person walking through the front door of our home for an unintended open house.
And so I signed back on yesterday evening after my little 48 internet lapse to write a blog post only to find. . .
- 64 personal emails, not including the Viagra hucksters, the generous son of a deceased Abidjan prince who hopes to share his 4.7 million dollar inheritance with me, and the woman who can’t seem to imagine anyone would pass on her offer of free porno downloads.
- 365 new updates to my RSS feed
- 200 plus Twitter Tweets
- 22 registration applications for the message forum
- 5 blog comments waiting approval
- a non-ending stream of Facebook status updates
- and no matter how hard I try to resist, I can’t help but sing “and a partridge in a pear tree.”
After responding to the emails, making a fleeting scan of the feeds and tweets, approving blog comments, accepting forum memberships, and checking on the highlights of the past two days in my Facebook friends lives, I signed off line as the clock neared midnight sans blog post.
For all the added distraction and stimulation the internet has brought into my life I continue to be grateful for the technological wonder that has allowed me to connect with others in ways that at times feel no less real or meaningful than intimate conversations shared in a quiet corner of a neighborhood coffee shop. Every time an email arrives from an unknown address and I open it to discover another poignant story of someone coming out as a gay Christian my eyes inevitably start stinging with tears, and I can’t help but wonder where so many of us who are wildly in love with God and absolutely queer would be in our lives were it not for the connections we found online? Neither can I imagine how much more painful, lonely and long my own journey would have been had I not found encouragement and hope online from strangers, now friends, who were walking the very same path in Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Australia, Spain, Tennessee…
Have I wasted hours of my life rambling aimlessly around the internet when I could have been engaged in the world outside my door? Sure, that’s a no-brainer. The internet is at times just one more bright and shiny object vying for attention in our lives but most of the time, the time that really matters, it’s where we share bits of ourselves with one another and experience genuine affection, concern, and community with others we would never have encountered in our lives were it not for this incredibly brilliant merging of human technology and Divine Spirit.
I’m as in awe of it today as I was back in 1992 when I was clunking around in the cyber world of black screens and Compuserve at a snail-staggering dial-up modem speed of 2400 baud. I’m grateful for the technology. I’m grateful for the human connections. Most of all, I’m grateful for the chance to get to know you. I really am.
So I’m curious.
- When did you first sign onto the internet? What service did you use?
- How many hours a week do you think you spend online outside of work?
- What do you like most about the internet?
- What do you like least about the internet?
Posted in Techno Nothingness
February 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sabbaticals are good, glad you enjoyed yours. Think I may take one soon.
First signed on in 1994 using good ‘ol AOL.
I spend toooooo many hours online.
I like the wide variety of colorful people I have met.
I hate that it has so much garbage on it but sometimes you just have to push through the garbage to find the beautiful things.
Welcome back Anita. You were missed.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I first signed on to the internet in 1992 through AOL on a phone modem that was painfully slow – but oh! I got so excited to be in contact with the world! I don’t keep track of my hours – quite a few. Favorite topics are theology and travel. I love being able to look up stuff, anything, and find all kinds of points of view – I read a lot online now with high speed.
The thing I like least – whatever danger there is of identity theft, followed by spamming.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Ruthann and Stephanie–> So in the beginning were you both on the hourly charge for AOL? If so, do you care to admit the highest monthly bill you ever paid? Mine averaged around 250.00 per month however I’m not happy to report that once I had a bill twice that big, of course it didn’t help that I feel asleep online a couple times and was signed on all night long.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Yes, I think I was charged hourly but it didn’t matter so much then because I had no idea what I was doing when it came to navigating my way around the internet, so I wasn’t on much.
But when I began selling real estate I changed my package to the unlimited, because I knew it was going to take an unlimited about of time to figure out what I was doing.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I think I first signed on with AOL on dial up when I was 12.
My current job is running Status King ( the first facebook app that turns facebook status updates into t-shirts) so I spend way too much time online. I am on working until my eyes get feel like they have sand under them. Feels like work.
Information.
I hate that we still have light projecting computer screens. It kills my eyes.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:08 am
I echo Stephanie’s comment above…you were missed. You are a major security blanket for me sometimes and I appreciate it.
I first went online in 1998 with at&t dial up which was so slow I would get impatient and that prevented me from staying on too long. Now I probably average an hour a day.
I like the connections with other people and the easy access to information. It has opened doors for me because I am the shyest person in the Northern hemisphere.
The viruses, spamming, identity theft and other evils are definitely the downside.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am
My first time online was 1984 when I worked on a project for DARPA. Back in the olden days we called it the ARPAnet. We used programs called finger, gopher, kermit, pine, and ftp.
How many hours a week… hmmm, a couple…dozen or so.
Best feature of the net for moi: Blogging/community/connecting.
What I hate: multiple login accounts with different password rules for everyone!
February 11th, 2009 at 10:04 am
So. When did I first sign onto the internet? Does pre-internet count? My brother and I had a BBS called “Midnight Oil” in 1984. I’ve been online pretty steadily ever since, not counting a hiatus in 1988-1990. Oh, and if you care, I went by “Robbing Hood” then. Ah, I was young, once.
I have never used AOL or any big service like that. Do-it-yourself.
I am online at least 10 hours a day. Probably more. I basically live at my computer. When I’m not in the classroom, I am teaching online (my classes are hybrid), and I do much of my research using JSTOR (the salvation of 21st Century theorists who can’t get articles via interlibarary loan or are too lazy to see if the local library actually has a copy or are researching in the middle of the night and have good reason to believe the local library might frown on the forced entry into the stacks by a hyper-caffeinated academician in grungy sweats and a paint-spattered ballcap.
I love most that I can keep up with friends and make new friends in ways unthinkable just 20 years ago, when letter writing was a must, and a 2-week wait for responses the best bet in town. I love that the ‘net has enabled fellowship across the years and the miles!
I hate spam, chain letter scams, and glurge more than anything. I am not kidding when I say I can trace the precise year when spam exploded a hundred fold, from the occasional spam to over 100 a day. There oughta be some sort of rule that people go to Snopes.com before they forward anything!
February 11th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I first used AOL too, in um… 1994 I think. It was so brutally slow I could click to dial in, go make dinner, come back and click to load my email, go eat dinner, and then come back actually read something. I tried to keep my charges down so I always downloaded my email, signed off, wrote my responses, then signed back on when I was ready to send. In fact AOL had a setting where it would dial in, retrieve and send email, then sign back out again with one click. Very handy! I didn’t do much internet surfing to speak of, at least not what we know today!
I can easily spend a couple hours after work online but I try not to. Lately it’s been more like 30 minutes – trying to balance! But I do sit in front of a computer all day, so I have the advantage of being able to check in when I have a minute or two.
I am incredibly grateful for the connections that can be made and the information that is available on the Internet. Those are probably two of the most powerful things we have in our lives. (Our faith being the other!) The negative aspect I think is sacrificing face-to-face relationships for virtual ones and skipping over the informative sites for the juicy gossip & mindless drivel. It’s so easy to get sucked in!
February 11th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I began in 1994 on AOL V. 1.7. Dial up was the 2400kpbs! HA!!!
Too many hours outside of work right now. Need to balance that a bit!
I like most the connections with wonderful people
I like least the draw it has to keep me from handling the mundane tasks that I tend to avoid anyway (but must be done)
Thanks for sharing Anita…
February 11th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
* When did you first sign onto the internet? What service did you use?
I started online somewhere in the late 1990′s using webtv! with a wireless keyboard, no less.
* How many hours a week do you think you spend online outside of work?
only a couple – almost 100% of my ‘online work/life’ is devoted to business-related stuff because my business is online.
* What do you like most about the internet?
- the connection – i wrote a book i sell all over the world with another coach i’ve never met in person! we met in a coaching program online.
- the ability to have so much ‘at your fingertips’.
* What do you like least about the internet?
- sucks up a lot of my time
- hype (in terms of ability to build an online biz)
- it’s a wild, wild west – people forget that