It’s just been brought home to me with sickening clarity that the Internet, or to be more precise life online, is nothing less than an addiction. I am writing these words offline as I try desperately to get through to France Telecom so that they can, er, service my habit (if I were online I wouldn’t be wasting my time with this blog; I’d be wasting it with something far more trivial).
If I were a terrorist (but then again no as Elton John would say) I wouldn’t bother with airplanes, nice as they are; I’d just zero in on the ISPs of this world or perhaps the servers stored by Google and others in huge data farms spread around the world. That should do the trick. More seriously, and speaking as one who has never before had any qualms about storing data online and who has always been a fan of web-based applications like Gmail and Google docs and spreadsheets, I am beginning to see their limitations.
Advantages of the online world:
- Ability to collaborate with others (who else?)
- Data still available even if your computer breaks down
- Data accessible from anywhere
Advantages of the offline world:
- Ability to continue working, as opposed to communicating, at all times.
The solution? In an ideal world web applications should also come in a desktop version and vice versa, and/or back-up internet connections should be made available. Is the latter technically feasible?
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