I have watched the birth of the consumer Internet. Not literally, I'm not talking the days of ARPAnet and co, but I remember BBSs, private systems you'd dial into to find software you wanted (at very slow speeds), and chat to like minded people. I was on CompuServe, back when that and AOL were around before the main Internet really took off in the home. Where you could find areas of interest, chat with people on the system, download 256 colour porn, slowly coming into focus over the painful speed of dialup connections, and my earliest experiences of interactive erotica, when I was around 14-15. I didn't understand what it was back then, I just thought it was fun and attention, a mistake I made with many things, but it was relatively harmless. Then for me came Winsock, and a connection to the larger Internet.
Back in it's infancy, it allowed access to new things. IRC - the Internet Relay Chat system, globally linked sets of servers defined as a network group, text based with a sprinkling of ASCII art via mIRC scripts (I'll never forget accidentally clicking the thing that said Nine Inch Nails in a room with a girl I liked, and it popping up that "I want to fuck you like an animal" - I hadn't quite figured out what Nine Inch Nails was at the time. I went a very bright shade of red. Not that she could tell, though I'm fairly sure I confessed my embarrassment.) Joining rooms of interest, finding people in common, trying to fit in, spreading out into other rooms that friends recommended, and some of those friends I'm still in touch with today. ICQ came with its defining "honk" on load. I mostly used that to chat to friends I knew, with the odd random person that I kept in touch with for many years after (waves to Amanda in the States). Newsgroups set up to follow interests, synchronised across ISPs. Yahoo! Messenger followed. Then MSN. Cute little smiley icons, graphic representations of the text emojis we'd used for years. Chatpoint (hey ldy_kimmer!). HoTMaiL, the first free web based email system that I saw, that operated independently from your ISP email, which you'd normally access with a client like Eudora or Netscape Communicator. Trillian, connecting me to all the disparate networks at once. The browser wars. Frontpage. PHP. RealAudio Player and NetRadio, in gloriously poor quality. Everything got cheaper, pop unders were everywhere, your browser getting overtaken with a million windows, at least 30% of which were porn related. The susceptibility of people to be infected with wonders such as the Anna Kournikova virus. The rise of Microsoft Outlook, developed from Microsoft Schedule+, and all the hell it caused, with it's non-standard email formatting and it's magical ability to spread viruses across the Internet. Pings of death on port 139. But I digress.
I came from IRC, instant messengers, then web chat systems, then the likes of Myspace turned up. People creating a virtual persona of themselves. I suppose this was the beginning of the virtual personalities, an extension of that which we present to others, except it's a one way street, non-interactive. Forums replaced newsgroups. Facebook happened. There's an annoying plethora of messengers out there, which are rarely cross compatible. (I miss the days of being able to use Trillian and GAIM for them.)
But here's the problem. In this hyper-connected world, where we are always available to hundreds of people at once, at any given point, we're more isolated than ever. I live it. Email is a reasonably convenient replacement for postal communication. But instant messaging, instead of being a supplement for normal communication, appears to have supplanted it for a large part of the population - particularly myself. And in doing so, it's reduced the actual connections we have. A few messages here and there are good, a little message to cheer someone up, checking what's going on tonight for plans, group chats for making arrangements. But "sharing" experiences via online platforms has devalued them all, especially with the sheer amount we're bombarded with. Even when sharing real life experiences with people we care about, how engaged are we really? How many times do we look at our phone instead of interacting with those we're with, always looking for the little dopamine hits that the apps on our phones are trying to generate? And when did we forget how to connect in real life properly?
This all seems quite ironic considering just how engaged I've been in these systems. They helped at first. The way my brain is wired, I found it extremely difficult to communicate with anyone, but text allows me to be more careful with what I write and give considered responses, rather than getting flustered in real life, which happens far too often. I've grown up with these systems of communication, they're completely integrated into how I operate. I dreamed of the day I could implant a coprocessor in my brain, access additional storage, everything faster, better, be more efficient, be better, be smarter, be something more.
Yet I suspect all I'd achieve right now is to manage to task switch multiple times more quickly, and achieve half as much as I do, though I'd have looked up a dozen pages of vaguely interesting but mostly irrelevant data on Wikipedia.
And I want out.
All I've ever really been seeking is connections. From friends to soulmates. But to truly connect, I finally believe you must disconnect first, which is entirely foreign to me.
But I'm going to learn.
Live in the real life. Don't fade into being a digital ghost. Because every moment, every connection, every conversation face to face, or even on the phone, has so much more value than a few bits of text sent across this fantastic global network we have.
You can never truly appreciate the sound of the river, the smell of the fresh rain, the feel of the bark of a tree, the feel of the grass between your toes, from a picture or a description from a phone screen.
This is not living. This is existing in something that doesn't actually exist, a projection. No matter how much I wanted it all to be real over the years, it often falls apart if you give it a slight poke. But those meals with friends, laughter, playing silly games, going for a walk, pushing yourself to be better, kisses in the sun, holding hands, enjoying beautiful roads and the countryside, tactile contact, intimacy, losing yourself in moments with people, and learning to slow right down. Moments. Real life moments.
Sometimes watching cat videos with your friends, or films, or gaming, or scheduling to spend time in real life together, via the Internet, is great. But don't forget to disconnect a little. Use the system as you need it, don't just become part of it. And try to realise this before you hit 39, like I'm about to. The Internet is a massively interconnected set of tools, and a damn fine set at times, helping us be more time efficient, learning things, being entertaining, and providing far more amusements and distractions than your average arcade in the 80s. But it should always work for you, not the other way around. Remember to live in the real world, and don't get lost in the ether like I did, hiding from the real world and rarely getting the connections I needed because I was looking for them through a screen.
