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The Nation's Pulse
Without a Net
For some, computers, Internet reduce productivity.
I have been without the Net for two weeks. Rest assured, this is a temporary condition; I haven’t converted to Luddism. Though I am grateful for the unprecedented amount of work I’ve been able accomplish without it.
I’m not the only desk jockey who thinks so. Recently a writer (on the Internet, naturally) made the point that the most productive people (Woody Allen, for example) do not even own a computer. At first, I scoffed. Now I’m a believer. Up to a point.
Like most everything invented after 1793 — the year Eli Whitney’s cotton gin breathed new life into “the peculiar institution” — the Internet has been a mixed blessing. Information I sorely need to do my work is but a click away. Those born after the dawn of the World Wide Web may find it hard to imagine a time when it could take weeks to find an answer to a question like: how many people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge? Back then, I’d have to put on pants and trudge twenty miles through eight feet of snow to a library with a well-stocked reference section, find the stacks of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, implore surly reference librarians to request the materials from even more distant libraries, and wait weeks for them to come in, before I finally got a letter informing me that I could pick up my materials, after I pay the five dollar fee.
Being Netless forces those of us with literary pretensions to dust off the cobwebs and change out of our soiled pajamas and actually leave the house, which is always a good thing. Personally, I have to pack my laptop and drive five miles to my cousin’s coffee shop where there is free WiFi. I refuse to pack the battery cable though. I don’t want to be mistaken for one of those digital nomads my cousin is always complaining about, the freeloaders who use his tables and outlets as their rent-free office space, who order one medium coffee and spend eight hours sucking up his electricity. I have an old Sony Vaio with a lousy battery, so I can only get about an hour of surfing before the battery dies. That’s okay; it means I have to stop playing on the Web and go home and put on my pajamas and get some real work done.
I SHOULD NOTE that the previous 400 words would — in my connected days — take up to three days to write. Not because they are particularly insightful or original, rather by the time I got to the fourth sentence I would have stopped to check my email eight times, paused to Google: “What do you call freeloaders who make coffee shops their offices?” and “How long does a Sony laptop battery last?” or I would have remembered that I haven’t looked at The Onion’s website for a few days and I could use a laugh. Before you know it three days would have passed and I’d still be 400 words shy. Without the Internet, I can pretty much knock off the first draft of an 800-word column in a few minutes.
Better yet, I’ve actually started reading books again. I have shelves of nonfiction masterpieces that I have ignored for too long because I’ve been too busy seeing what James Poulos is Tweeting about, or what my girlfriend is Facebooking about me. I’ve spent ages collecting these books. I always imagined when I finished C.V. Wedgwood’s The Thirty Years War, and Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, and Jan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle I would be a much better writer and debater because I would have these great stores of knowledge to pull from, and I could better see how we fit into the long arc of history. Instead, the books remain unopened, buried under years of dusty neglect , because I am too busy clicking to see if there are any new Shinyribs videos on YouTube.
And yet, without the Internet I would never have become the writer I am today. Before the Net, my submissions were few and far between. Woody Allen may be extraordinarily prolific scribbling on yellow legal pads, but I am far too lazy for that. Tapping out manuscripts and sending them off in the mail (SASE included) and waiting months for the inevitable rejection slip would have quickly worn thin. Whatever mark I’ve made as a writer I owe to the Web.
Hopefully, my connection will be re-established by the end of the week. In the meantime, I’m going to crack open a book. And not an eBook on one of those iPads either, but an old-fashioned paperback that has no email or Facebook apps. Maybe I’ll actually read the damn thing.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
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Stuart Koehl| 9.23.10 @ 8:45AM
Christopher,
Just because you have no self control and multitask poorly does not mean the rest of us must follow your lead.
Dan Hirsch| 9.23.10 @ 9:51AM
Stuart,
I've read many of your posts. You seem exceptionally well and widely read; pretty disciplined, too. I say don't refuse Christopher a little slack for having a low central planning brain function. It gives him the explorer and discoverer's penchant for the adjacent interesting idea. Sometimes overplanning's pre-selected objective is worth less than the unlooked for nugget of gold.
Besides Stu, he's up there workin' it. And you are sitting in the weeds, maybe not doing as much as you might, given your obvious brain and preparation.
This is means extremely well to both.
I'm wondering how Christopher dodged the ADD medication! I did by being born before they got it going...
Stuart Koehl| 9.23.10 @ 4:12PM
Well, I've got my day job, and my occasional blogs for the Weekly Standard and First Things, and I have just started up a new project which is eating a lot of my time, plus I just got back from my first real vacation in years, but I admit to laziness. My motto is "First Draft Equals Final Draft"--I hate rewriting my own stuff even more than I hate rewriting other people's stuff, so I try to turn in a finished product on the first g0-around (to the annoyance of my process-obsessed co-workers who insist that we need to turn in an outline, then a rough draft, then a finished draft, then a final draft. Which is why I prefer to work alone. But not everyone can do it this way, and to each his own. The one prerequisite for successful writing is the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
Sam Vaughn| 9.23.10 @ 8:56AM
This leaves me pondering a personal fantasy. NOT what you're thinking,, , a month without the web, cell phone, etc. if somebody wants to reach me try the old black phone on the wall that still works when the power is out.
Sitting in the audience of a presentation by Mark Andreesen back in 1993 I realized in a flash the world was going to change in a big way. Having used "darpanet" and Archie and Gopher and the "command line" I knew in a flash that the demonstration of Mozilla up on the stage was a life changing event. Though the CIO's around poo-pooed the event, many were stunned as I was. Vinton Cerf talked about the exponential increase of the World Wide Web and very few believed the numbers. In fact he underestimated. Many of us knew the pace of life and change would be the first "casualty". But we also knew that it could immeasureably improve the substance and quality of life. As we move forward your article reminds me not to forget what work was like prior to the "Net". We may find our selves having to remember those skills if the federal government nationalizes the Internet under some innocuous sounding title like "net neutrality".
Sam Vaughn| 9.23.10 @ 9:02AM
wooops... for the WWW purists among us I should have said Mosaic which went on to become Netscape Navigator...
Petronius| 9.23.10 @ 9:09AM
A Republican I used to know told me that reading books makes me a dangerous person. It's a benign insult after everything else I've been called. Contempt is our reward for not fitting the molds manufactured by institutions and refusing to jump through the hoops held in front of us by those with power. And this closes the loop on your column about loners and their alleged proclivities for going berserk. If outside forces did not mess with them, there would be a great deal less mayhem. My nosey neighbor who keeps harping that I ought to do volunteer work can't understand that would interfere with my reading. But I don't want to shoot him in the butt with rock salt; yet.
Dan Hirsch| 9.23.10 @ 9:53AM
Would that Republican get a Tea Party endorsement? I guess not...
Petronius| 9.23.10 @ 7:48PM
At a Pachyderm luncheon a sitting State Senator said to me, "there aren't enough people like you to elect anyone to anything. You should leave." I did.
I have voted Republican only because there is nobody to the Right of them who can win. Things are different now.
Albert| 9.23.10 @ 11:08AM
"Personally, I have to pack my laptop and drive five miles to my cousin's coffee shop where there is free WiFi." Was this drive through eight feet of snow?
Albert| 9.23.10 @ 11:16AM
I have often daydreamed of a time before cell phones. These things are even more addictive and than the www. I used to drive home from work through eight feet of snow without any means of communication, and it was peaceful, even relaxing (as much as it can be relaxing when driving through eight feet of snow.) Then my wife and daughter got separate cell phones and I no longer had the opportunity to be alone and enjoy the eight feet of snow. Even at the office, with eight feet of snow lying outside, I find myself answering the cell phone from wife, daughter, friend, auto repair shop, etc... Work? I might have time this afternoon for that.
LMajito| 9.23.10 @ 11:36AM
Well Christopher, I'm sad that you never heard of Lynx (http://lynx.isc.org/) which was a text browser long before the geco and netscape came into the scene...there also was gopher that could be used to conduct massive searches (pretty much like google)...many of use old geeks were delivering software via the internet way before bean counters at major software houses (many did not even existed) found out that copying diskettes (later cutting cds) was too pricey and using ftp instead would compress delivery time plus pad their bottom lines...but then again, those were the days...of net wonder...
Kristi of Boulder| 9.23.10 @ 7:38PM
Well before cell phones, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story about a man who can't stand the constant babble of his 'wrist phone' and all the other noise surrounding him. The man shorts it out by pouring mint chocolate ice cream upon it and is subsequently jailed for anti-social behavior. Great story. Sometimes you have to shut out the babble. And maybe eat some mint chocolate ice cream instead.
By the way, Ray Bradbury, resident of Los Angeles, never even learned to drive a car.
Michael| 9.24.10 @ 2:32PM
Websites. Books. E-mail. My three main uses for computers. When it has to do with computers I'm practically Amish. However, Woody Allen? Please!! Select a more decent person to prove your point.
Joanna | 6.6.11 @ 6:13AM
The time is definitely right for change.
UTI Treatment