Falling Back, 58. Internet Junkies.

Since last night around midnight, our internet and phone service have been going off and on. When there was internet, it was so slow that nothing would load. Then, there would be no phone service. Around noon, everything finally came back. Until then, everyone who hooked up to the Orange antennas was cut off from the rest of the world. 

It has reached the point at which we tend to take internet for granted. Through it, we can visit entire libraries, go to school, visit with friends, go shopping, do business. Having our service interrupted, even for a few hours, feels like walls have been set up around us, isolating us as if we were in a solitary prison cell. 

Thirty years ago, being alone in the house meant being alone. There would be a landline, but that was it. A television or radio would bring us news, but we couldn't reach out through them to anyone. To speak with people, we had to leave the house and get together with others. Was it better? In some cases, yes. I find it much easier to do business face to face, not even on the phone. I will not do shopping online except for items impossible to find nearby, such as specific English books. I have done a couple of free online courses, though I don't remember much of them, and would probably have learnt the material better if I had attended a physical class.

Now, being in the house doesn't mean instant solitude. During the strict lockdown in spring, people still got together through Zoom, Skype, and Whatsapp, along with a myriad of other applications. Of course, it wasn't the same as hugging a family member who lived elsewhere, but at least people could talk and see each other's faces in real time. 

I don't mind being alone, but I've gotten so used to being able to be in contact with the outiside world through my phone or computer, that to realize I couldn't go online whenever I felt like it, seemed like I was cast adrift on an island without a boat. In a way, it was scary to realize I've become dependent on having an internet connection much like I am dependent on having electricity. Yet, when I first moved here, I had to watch ABC World News Tonight at eight in the morning on television to know anything about what had happened the day before in the United States. There was a channel here that carried it for a year or two, then they changed to CNN News, then they just stopped airing anything not in Spanish. Any other news came from Spanish outlets and had a Spanish frame of mind.

Internet has quickly become a necessary utility. If it gets cut off it's as if we had our water cut off, or our electricity. If someone had told me as a teenager that we could reach out all over the world through a computer, I would have thought it would happen so far in the future that I would never get to see it. Well, I'm seeing it now.

Life continues.