On Sunday I went to church. To me going to church is something that only happens at Christmas or when friends get married or babies (preferably my friend’s) get baptized. Well, there I was with a couple of friends enjoying Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All-Night Vigil” (it’s a cappella choir composition thing, don’t ask…).
We had barely opened the church door before I’d made a check-in on Foursquare (and got the Mayorship! Apparently not a lot of churchgoers uses Foursquare…), my friend checked us in on Facebook, all of us captured the event on Instagram, and I even made a Picle.
Only because it seemed to be frowned upon to have your iPhone out in the open did I not share the experience on Twitter, Google+, Path, Tadaa or any of the other billion social apps out there. I wanted to, though, and I had to fight hard not to pursue my urge to check and see if any of my friends or followers had “liked” or commented on my unusual Sunday afternoon activity.
Image may be NSFW.
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I’m still here
I know I’m not the only one who sometimes feel almost obliged to Vine when I dine, leave my trace through check-ins, and update friends and strangers on my world views through any number of social network sites and apps. Although it takes time (and sometimes focus) all these updates are not necessarily a bad thing. It is part of being human. We want to share, and we want to connect. We are born to be social. And given the means this is what we will do.
The other day I read an article on theverge.com by Paul Miller called “I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet”. The title kind of gives it away – Paul Miller, a tech journalist at The Verge, decided to go a year without going online. He felt stressed from the information overload the Internet provided, and he needed a break. And so he went offline, and stayed that way for 365 days.
His non-internet existence ended on May 1st, and in the article – and video that goes along with it – he accounts for his experience. At first he spent his extra free time reading, he met with friends in real life, he wrote letters (you know the kind you put in a physical mailbox) and he had time to work on his novel. Life was good. But it didn’t last. As his experiment went on his favorite place became the couch cooped up with video games. He would go for days without seeing anybody, his family got worried when his phone died and he couldn’t be reached, and he lost touch with his long distance friends.
After a year with no access to the World Wide Web, he was eager to get back online. Because as he puts it the internet is “where people are”. This is where we connect.
The golden mean
It’s not a question whether or not the Internet is time consuming. It is part of our lives, so of course it takes up time. I must admit that some of the things I do online is a waste of time. It doesn’t make me smarter, or more informed, or better connected. But a lot of what I do – or can do – is amazing.
I want to share. I want to connect. And I want to be enlightened. I am only human. But as with anything else in life online activity is about finding the golden mean. Sometimes we need to go offline to stop and smell the flowers – or pay attention to the church choir in front of us. After all, we can always blog about it later.