Abstinence
If not for this assignment I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that I would, could never go 24 hours without some sort of internet interaction. I use the internet at work, at home, at school. I need it.
What I did to make it easier on myself was to use the internet to do all of the things I thought I would need to do on the internet first thing in the morning when I woke up. I checked my work email, my school email, and my personal email, yes I have three, what a disaster. After I checked my email I used the internet to check my bank account balance online, I got on blackboard to check if anything was due or if my professors had posted any assignments or announcements. I use myspace and facebook to communicate with friends of mine whom I don’t go to school with or that I don’t see very often so I checked that out just to be sure that no one needed my for anything of any real importance. I looked all clear. I remembered that a new song just came out by Outkast that I heard on satellite radio the day before so I checked out itunes and they didn’t have it, I checked limewire and found it, downloaded it and found two other Joss Stone songs I was looking for so I downloaded those and plugged my ipod in and synced it really quick. At that point I had done all of the things that I thought I had to get done on the internet within the next 24 hours. All of the things I did that morning were the same things that I do throughout my day almost everyday of the week. My dependence on the internet is more than evident.
Maybe it was because I knew I couldn’t access the internet for 24 hours but throughout that day I thought of a million things I should have done that morning while I was online. At one point in the day I wanted to check the balance on my credit card, which can be done by phone but after listening to seven different prompts before I hear ‘to hear your current balance press 8’ it takes me at least five or six minutes. I would much rather hop online and check it out. I wanted to check out a bill pay that I made online through my bank, I wanted to look on ebay for a product that I discovered recently to compare the price with the in store price, I thought of a couple of other songs that I really wanted to download so that I would have them on my ipod for my workout that night. To be completely honest I feel like I replaced time that would have been spent on the internet with time thinking about what I would do on the internet when I got to use it again.
I use the internet for entertainment, business, school, work, research, my whole life. I am dependent on the internet. My hypothesis is that as time goes on my dependence will only grow. I think its fine though. I would guess that total, on average, I spend about one to three hours a day on the internet accomplishing various tasks, if I had to do all of these things somehow without the internet it would take far longer. So really spending that time on the internet actually frees up more of my time that it takes up and I find it very entertaining and usually relaxing. I have a very busy life and getting to sit down to download a song or check my facebook makes me very happy.
About Me
- Suzziq
- salem/corvallis/portland/allovertheplace, Oregon, United States
- This is my first Blog ever!!
my lola before her big hair cut!
4 comments:
I can definitely agree with you there; the need for the internet! You really do a lot of things that require you to be on-line. I don’t know how you did it. Congratulations. Wasn’t it crazy that in only twenty-four hours the need was more apparent and just the fact that it was forbade to use it made it that much harder.
LOL I like your honesty. I spent most of the time I couldn't go online thinking about what I would do when I could go back on as well. It's scary how important the internet is in the life of nearly every college student I have ever met. We have been raised with the internet and other tachnological devices that have helped our lives in some ways, but we must also realize that there are negatives that come with these new techological devices as well. This I think is the biggest problem, not that we use advanced techonolgy, but that we refuse to see a downside in these products and our dependence for more new high tech gadgets is only increasing. Alex Christensen
Suzzi I think it is probably true that you save time by doing your tasks online instead of over the phone or some other way. I am just curious if you really need to do so many things. Do you need to know what you account balance is or could you just keep it in your check book. If you need to talk to a friend I feel like speaking to them on the phone may be more effective than in an email or on facebook. I do realize that the internet does help people get more done, but my question is, do you really NEED to do all of these things every day?
Yes, it sounds like you've got a real connection to the internet. How long have you become accustomed to its use like you do or did it gradually happen? It does speed things along; at least we believe it does. We e-mail but have to wait for a reply. We get irritated if the downloading takes more time than we want. It seems hurry, hurry, hurry. It was funny that you spent your time thinking about what you should have done but it was pretty clever of you to do it all first thing in the morning so it didn't seem as if you were off it as long. At least it is over now and we can get on to the next line of business.
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