Offline Life
It’s been a while since I’ve put up a post. This isn’t going to be good for my 100 Days challenge since there are only so many days left in 2024, but there has just been things going on.
I was out for my pseudo-daily run today and listening to a podcast from the EFF, How To Fix The Internet. The episode was an older one, but I’m catching up on some episodes I missed earlier while they’re on break. During the episode, the guest Dave Eggers casually made a comment about how the computer he uses daily is around 19 years old. He keeps using it because he owns all the software on it, and it’s not a cloud machine.
This got me thinking about my own computer.
Now, I spend a whole lot of time online. Literally my job requires it since I work full time remote. I have a decent fiber connection to my house with hundreds of megabits of bandwidth that my kids love to max out with whatever they happen to be streaming at the time time. Usually more than one thing at a time. 19 years ago, this wasn’t true.
Could I function with a computer from 19 years ago?
I can honestly say that the way computers work today, I absolutely could not. I look at my dock at the bottom of my screen at the applications I’ve decided are most important to have close at hand. Other than the file explorer and my terminal, they’re all Internet applications. A full three of them are browsers. I’ve made no secret I’m a fan of Vivaldi, and I think it’s safe to say I spend the majority of my online time using it. I joke Vivaldi is more an operating system for me than a browser, but it’s not much of a joke. I’ve worked in computers for over 25 years now, and even for someone like me, I practically live in a browser. I can see the merit of a device like a ChromeBook (you know, without the creepy Google stuff). A low end laptop with a big battery and a current version of my browser will cover 95% of my daily requirements.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of that reality. I got Internet for the first time around 30 years ago when I first went to college. Prior to that, I participated in some BBSs, but I wasn’t “online” like people would define it today. The BBS software I used mirrored the content of the BBS on my local computer so I could read and respond, and when I was ready I would kick off a sync that would post my messages to the board and download new content. I’d spend maybe 10 minutes a day actually connected to the BBS.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. There’s no profound message here at the end or solution to all my problems. As I said earlier, my job requires I be online, so I’m not going to go back to those old BBS days. Even if the technology existed that allowed me to mirror every part of the Internet I visit on a daily basis and interact with it and sync those interations later, my job would still require me to be online.
I do feel like I’m probably spending an unhealthy amount of time on the internet. That probably sounds strange from a guy that runs his own social media site, but I do think it’s true. I need to look at what I’m doing on the internet and why I’m doing it. Maybe there’s an offline solution that would be better for me personally. Maybe there’s not. I guess I’ll never know until I look.
Day 25 of the #100DaysToOffload Series.
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