Hello Again

I’m officially back from my Internet sabbatical. Just to recap: For three months, I had no access to email, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, iTunes, GPS maps, or Hulu. I used my Kindle to read the New York Times, but only because that edition doesn’t update throughout the day, so it was more or less like reading the regular paper. I also kept my back-up software running, so I wouldn’t lose any work. Other than that, I stayed entirely off the grid. The only time I cheated was when I downloaded a book to my Kindle, though I deleted it an hour later and bought the paperback edition. I’m somewhat embarrassed by this slip-up, mostly because the book in question was God Emperor of Dune.

I went offline because the Internet was making me crazy. I was spending countless hours on the web, yet getting little work accomplished. Entire afternoons would vanish, and I’d have nothing to show for them, save for a bunch of illicitly acquired .zip records I’d never find time to listen to. Perhaps not surprisingly, the three months spent without web access were incredibly productive. They were also, at times, incredibly dull.

Every day was pretty much the same: I’d wake up early, read the paper for an hour, and write for most of the morning and afternoon. Around 5 or so, I’d check to see if any new mimeographs had come in, and then figure out how to get through the rest of the day without access to retro pornography or cat videos. Usually, I’d call a few friends, watch the news, and then read for several hours. Once I was through with that, I’d look up and notice it was only 8:30. It was a lot like retirement. I’d never complain about having too much downtime—it’s like complaining about having too many drink tickets, or too many hugs—but on these slower nights, I’d often find myself wondering how the hell I filled my time in the pre-web era. I probably sat around in front a word processor all night, waiting for someone to come up with a device that let you watch old public-access commercials while taking multiple Star Wars trivia quizzes.

That said, while I was occasionally bored living offline, I was never unhappy. Granted, I missed reading sites like Videogum and Vulture, and I can only imagine how many idiosyncratic indie-rock debates I was being shut out of. But for the most part, I’ve never been so relaxed. Gone was the urgent need to constantly refresh my email and news readers, a need driven by the usually unfounded fear that something important was going on, and that I was missing out on it. And it was immensely satisfying to come up with a joke or a story idea and simply enjoy playing with it for a few hours, rather than going online to discover that 3,287 people had already thought of it. These sorts of anxieties didn’t exist for me until the web came along, and I was happy to lose them for a few months. The more distance I had, the more I realized that the Internet can be kind of a jerk at times.

Going offline also demonstrated just how many of my day-to-day pleasures had been disrupted by the web. Conversations with friends, for example, are much more revelatory and fun after you’ve been cut off from their Twitter and Facebook feeds, and therefore have no idea what the hell they’ve been up to; I can’t remember a time when I was so genuinely curious about other people’s lives. Even music sounded better, as the lack of hourly downloads forced me to concentrate on albums for days or weeks at a time, something I hadn’t done since college. I also rooted around my existing CD collection, looking for albums I’d only listened to a couple of times before shelving them away. This yielded a few unjustly forgotten gems. It also proved, once and for all, that no career-spanning box set needs a fifth disc.

The main thing I learned from all of this, though, was just how much I enjoy being in the dark. My favorite moments of the last three months occurred when I had no idea what the hell was going on, both in my life, or in the outside world. I wandered around towns, or even my own neighborhood, with the GPS off and my eyes wide open. I actually talked to people I’d just met, rather than waiting to go home and glean their interests from their Facebook profile. I just sort of let things happen, which is tough to do when you’ve become accustomed to having the web plan and predict everything out for you. Don’t get me wrong: I understand why people look up the menu before they leave for the restaurant, and why they memorize the set lists weeks before a band comes to town. But after a certain point, the web turns you into your own worst spoiler. It all reminds me of a book I read once, about a tyrant who’s granted the ability to see into the future, only to discover that life without surprises is pretty boring. Then he turns completely into a worm. It’s called God Emperor of Dune. You should download it sometime.

POSTSCRIPT

During my three months offline, I tried to keep track of every random person, place, or query that popped randomly into my head, with the intention of Googling them all once I reconnected. So far, I’ve only bothered to follow up on a couple of them. The complete list, presented without context, is below.

- Bran Van 3000

- The filmography of Bruce Dern

- Porcupine quills

- Charles Willeford

- “Sitting Round at Home”

- History of must-see TV

- Tom Eagleton biography?

- When did drunk driving become DWI become DUI? [Note: I’m not sure what this means]

- John Reed’s Pancho Villa book

- The supporting cast of Pennies From Heaven

- Bobcats

- The pointer sisters’ ‘70s output

- “The pizza connection heroin trial” (2/21 times article)

- Has any dance producer sampled the opening bassline of Fleetwood mac’s “everywhere”?

- What causes déjà vu?

- Can drinking black coffee affect scorpion bites?

- Why are snooze alarms 9 minutes?

- Was Capricorn One a hit when it was released?

- What did Timothy Hutton do between Falcon and the Snowman and Beautiful Girls?

- What’s the production history of Dune?

- Machine gun macain

- Do eyeballs grow?

- Does the wiki entry for Santa Claus identify him as a fictitious character?

- Transcription of the phone conversation from Pailhead’s “Ballad”

- Why do people in Jumper watch NY1 if they live in Michigan? Was this noticed by critics?

- Jimmy Giuffre

- Douglas Trumbull still alive?

- What are [crazy former co-worker no. 1] and [crazy former co-worker no. 2] doing now?

- When was the last time someone was killed by being tied to the train tracks?

- Do cats swim?

- What is Thin Lizzy’s “Sitamoia” restaurant?

- What happened to that waterside restaurant in Bellefonte, Pa?