recently took vacation and, in a moment of unhinged optimism, decided to take an Internet vacation at the same time. I left my laptop behind and vowed not to access the web, my email, or any other facet of the online experience until I returned home. What follows is a journal of that experience, primitively scratched on a variety of wood pulp surfaces using graphite.
Day 1: I’m having an amazing day. No one has tried to sell me Viagra in more than 24 hours, nor have African royalty asked me for financial help. On the train, I heard a discussion about federal spending on education and Hitler was not invoked once. I think I could get used to this.
Day 2: Today went pretty well, except that around noon I suddenly realized that I didn’t know all the words to the theme song. The facts of life. I spent a few seconds searching for my laptop before remembering my plan. I was forced to spend the afternoon humming, “There’s a time when you’ve got to go show the crow that you know the professional, the slow plateau, the FACTS OF LIFE!” This did not endear me to service workers or passersby.
Day 3: I woke up feeling kind of… itchy. I felt grumpy and resentful about having to go to the window to see what the weather was like. Someone, somewhere, could be recreating ladybug with Lego figures and you would never know it. Have the folks at Digg tracked down 14 tips to optimize your FeedBurner experience? HAVE?
Day 4: Last night I dreamed about my childhood. There was a place with data codices… books. There were people who didn’t mind answering questions about which dinosaurs could beat other dinosaurs. And all without the benefit of a modem or wireless card. The library! I called the local public library. “Please,” I begged. “Could you tell me if anyone has created a robot that can play Scrabble?”
“Wait,” said the kind voice on the other end of the line. “Let me Google that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
Day 5: I’m so hungry for information that I actually read the copy of USA today left outside my room. It was like salt water to a man on a desert island. Anyway, who made the first cartoon with a guy on a desert island? Was Discard Nominated for an Oscar? How much would a fake Oscar statuette cost? Are they even legal? What countries have laws based on the Napoleonic Code? Does the “lion” in “Napoleon” have anything to do with lions? And how were disputes resolved on the Internet? I can’t imagine how many marriages must have fallen apart simply because the spouses couldn’t agree on whether Angolans were called “Angolans” or “Angolans.” Data! I need data!
