Final Blog Post

An online class about online communication certainly seems to be a delicious irony.  After all, those who use online communication for an entire class likely understand online communication very well, n’est pas?  However, this class brought up some questions and aspects of online communication that I found intriguing thought starters.

 

Between the weekly blogs and discussion posts, this class definitely made me write more than any other course.  On the other hand, I found that the online medium allowed me to submit shoddier work than usual.  I never bothered to seriously rewrite each blog post, the way I would with an ordinary essay.  Neither was I completely happy display my assignments for all of the world to see.  Once this class is finished, I will probably delete my wordpress blog, to keep my online profile low (Not that I have complete control over that—US Swimming apparently likes to post the best racing times for every swimmer ever registered with them.  Anyone in the world can find out how long it takes me to swim the 100 free.  Not a pleasant thought.)

 

Communication online for the coursework was an aspect I enjoyed.  The flexibility of the scheduling allowed me to continue working two jobs over the term.  Considering the economic situation, I didn’t want to give either of them up because of conflicts with class times. 

 

Despite these obvious advantages, I did miss the interaction of a physical classroom.  In on-campus classes, I and the other students had a chance to get to know each other.  With an online class, I didn’t have an opportunity to really get to know the other students or find out what they were like.  After this class ends, I’ll probably forget about everyone I encountered on this class, with the exception of a few people that I know from the Cascades Campus and/or previous online classes. 

 

Even though I come from the Millenial generation, I learned a few new tricks in this class, not least of which was how to turn off the reply moderation settings.  I enjoyed Neil Postman’s examination of the problems caused by technology—although it did feed my tendencies for paranoia—and was more than a little pleased to see that he followed up his criticism with a proposed solution.  I was also pleased to notice that he addressed the situation in a logical manner, without resorting to emotional tirades against the ridiculosities of modern technology and society, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera… (if you don’t know who I’m quoting with that, you need to start watching classic movies.  Especially because one of my great-aunts was in that movie. Lol).

 

From my perusal of some recent articles in the newspaper, online classes like this are apparently becoming the rage.  Communicating online for purposes of learning is becoming common because of its ease and accessibility—which could lead to more education, but could also lead to trivialization of education (the more common something is, the more overlooked it tends to become).  Again, it depends on how people use internet communication—to connect with other people and gain knowledge, or to distance themselves from people and clutter their minds with trivial information.

 

Goodbye folks, and good luck with wherever life may take you next!

Media: Internet misuse

The first news source I checked for articles on internet misuse was the local paper—the Bend Bulletin.  However, the CMC topic of the week is…drumroll…politicians tweeting updates to their fans.  The only type of CMC abuse I spotted there was common courtesy.  Tweeting during the President’s speech?  Come on, that breaks a courtesy rule I learned in grade school.  At least McCain’s sarcastic comments on the latest pork bills were amusing. 

 

Rather than dig through a week’s worth of newspapers stored in the recycle bin, I turned to the internet site for FoxNews.  There, I found an article entitled “MySpace: 90,000 Sex Offenders Purged From Web Site” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487486,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/cybersecurity).  Apparently, sex offenders were faking names and ages on MySpace and trying to contact people under 18.  MySpace administrators put in place new ways to corroborate users’ ages and restrict people over 18 from viewing the accounts of minors.  (Also note: FoxNews and MySpace are owned by the same parent company.).

 

This highlights one of the problems of CMC—perverts and scammers always find a way to use communication technology to their benefit.  Over the past week, I also read a news article reporting that Craigslist has become a major enabler of prostitution.  No matter what the altruistic or idealistic views of the creators were, the internet has a great potential for harm as well.  MySpace is perfect for anonymity and false presentation, so I agree with the stricter methods.

 

A related question, though, is about the victims or targets of sex offenders (or scammers, or perverts).  They need to be aware of the potential for misuse, and be alert for the signs of danger.  Sometimes, though, it seems like some people check their common sense at the door.  I just read another article online about middle-aged Canadian women who were bilked out of $300,000 by a Nigerian scammer on a dating site.  The guy wooed them via text messages and then asked them for help paying for his child’s “surgery.”  Last year, a Portland teenager tried to run away to Southern California to meet some sex offender that she thought was just a normal guy. 

 

Part of my concern here is about the common sense of the victims.  The other part of my concern is about the internet safeguards taking the place of common sense.  Yes, there’s a sucker born every minute, as PT Barnum put it, but restrictions and safeguards can only protect them so much.  In a related issue, parents often try to oversee every part of their childrens’ internet life, in order to protect them, but are they overprotecting their kids so much that the kids don’t learn how to take care of themselves?  Yes, MySpace and other networking sites need to do their part to keep sex offenders from kids, but the kids also need to be on guard themselves.

 

This relates slightly to Postman’s mentions of education in this week’s reading.  He mentions more about it in the next chapter, but this week he raises the question of “What is the purpose of education?”  He claims that, according to modern society, education helps students get good jobs.  I’d take it farther—I’d say that modern education aims to create good employees (except for a few high end schools that aim to create the leaders who will govern the good employees).  Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t appear to be on the curriculum.  Actually, common sense doesn’t even need to be in a textbook.  That would be giving into the philosophy that a textbook can teach us anything.

Wild Card

About five to six years ago, I met a good friend at camp.  We had the same interests, and could discourse intelligently on such important subjects as how many girlfriends Luke Skywalker had had (at least five, to the best of my knowledge).  But lo and behold, we lived several hours apart and neither of us had licenses nor the time and gas to get together.  So, we emailed. 

 

Soon, several things became clear.  First of all, my friend has a very goofy sense of humor.  But I usually interpreted most of his humorous sayings as serious.  The humor which would usually be accompanied by a laugh or the correct tone of voice no longer had those audible markers.  On the other hand, I myself have a rather sarcastic sense of humor.  Unfortunately, he also has a tendency to interpret as seriously.  Over time, I’ve managed to read between the lines and tell when he’s joking and not.  He, on the other hand, has never quite figured out when I’m joking and when I’m criticizing.

 

A few days ago, my friend and I were instant messaging about his imminent return home (he has spent the past year abroad in predominantly male society).  After he mentioned his deep eagerness to get home and “see girls,” I could resist a quick tease.  “You want to see girls again,” I sent, “you’ve got your priorities straight!”  He responded with a serious and defensive dissertation on why “seeing girls” was so important for when he returned stateside—not realizing until I corrected him that I was just joking.  

 

If we had been speaking face to face (or using iChat), I would’ve been able to communicate the fact that I was joking better.  But with instant messaging, I didn’t have tone of voice, and I didn’t have facial expressions.  I could roll my eyes or add a laugh-signals of jokes. 

 

This could’ve been avoided through the use of iChat, which is more like the video-communication in Star Trek.  But I didn’t have it, and I don’t know whether my friend would even be allowed to use it. 

 

I wonder whether this dependence on instant messaging and email is resulting in a poorer communication style.  We can communicate so much less through just words than if we use our voices and bodies as well.  Confusions like this also make me wonder whether CMC results in people who aren’t as aware of how they’re communicating things with their bodies and voices when they speak to others. Sometimes, when I’m talking to people or watching people converse, I can find out all sorts of interesting things by watching their unconscious movements or reactions.  At other times, I wonder whether depending too much on CMC leaves some people without polite conversational skills as well.  Sometimes I converse with people from my generation and I’ll realize that they don’t know how to shut up and take turns talking (aka listening).  Wood and Smith noted a similar situation in an example early on in the book, where one of the people involved noticed that she and a coworker were talking in emails—reply and question, reply and question.  

 

Blog 7

Well, out of all the things I learned, finding out who replied to my interview queries was rather interesting.  As I’m too busy to go downtown and pick folks off the street, I emailed several people I know or that I’m related to and asked them to answer the interview questions.  Oddly enough, the first person to reply to the questions was my grandfather, who is well past the 60s.  And eighteen year-old friend was the second to reply.  As to someone from the 36-60 age group….well, I ended up emailing two different people, and I never received answers from either of them.  I ended up having to talk to my third interviewee in person.  

           

The uses of the internet generally stayed the same.  All of them use the internet primarily for emailing friends and family.  The younger two, who are both attending college, use the internet to do school research and to send in assignments.  The older two also used the internet for everyday tasks such as paying bills, taking care of financial matters, and other useful tasks.  Another use mentioned—trip planning.  The interviewee from the 36-60 age group loves Travelzoo and other travel sites, particularly because they help her to dream about that vacation she really wants to take…

           

The two younger interviewees told me very little about how technology has changed their lives.  The youngest interviewee has never had to live without technology (He is probably one of those people who would die if all the computers in the world suddenly died.).  The middle-aged interviewee likes how the internet makes communicating easier, as well as how she can now find funny movies of cats on YouTube.  My grandfather said that technology made his life easier—allowed him to file things more neatly, print and scan things faster, and check his spelling.  For his age, he’s very computer literate—but then again, he’s an engineer by training, and he was the one who taught me binary. 

           

Over all, the three interviewees liked the internet and were happy about the benefits it brought to their lives.  My grandfather loves it, because it makes paying bills a lot easier.  Interestingly, he also likes the internet because it gives him something to do now that his mobility’s decreasing.  It’s harder for him to do things outside of the house now, so the internet helps him stay occupied.   

           

Oddly enough, the two replies I received via email were very short.  Perhaps one sentence answers to each question.  I don’t know whether it was because the two interviewees used email, or whether it was because they were both male.   

So, a couple of conclusions…email isn’t always a problem for older folks.  As my grandfather pointed out, it can help elderly people with reduced mobility or activeness to still stay in touch with what’s going on in the world.  For people in my generation, we’ve never had to live without the internet and computers.  Neither do we have a point of reference by which to compare it to a life without computers.  For those of us who grew up with computers, we are so used to the mindset and “invisible technologies” that Postman talks about that we don’t know any other way to live.  

Internet Communities

It HAD to be a new community.  That was the only downside to this week’s assignment.  I found that I much preferred the forum communities that I’m already a member of.  Similar subjects, but I had already spent years becoming a part of them.

 

I ended up joining the Inheritance Forums, devoted to the fan community surrounding the Inheritance Cycle books (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and the yet-unnamed fourth book).  The website is www.inheritanceforums.com.  My first impressions were not so good.  There were some difficulties in sending my email validation, and, judging from the numerous entries on the Help thread for validation emails, the forum has consistent problems with sending validation emails to yahoo accounts. 

 

The Inheritance Forums were also very strict about the site’s netiquette.  Rules are natural for such forums, but this is the first forum I’ve found that requires proper English.  The administrators, to my great surprise, would show up on threads to alert users if their post is too unreadable, or if the punctuation wasn’t good.  It reminded me of what Wood and Smith wrote about using netiquette to make sure that all users treat each other with respect.  However, they could’ve added that rules could go a tad bit too far. 

 

Not that I had any run-ins with the administrators.  (innocent look)

           

I started working my way into the community by using tried and true methods.  I filled in my user profile with an avatar picture and some information about my interests and favorite Eragon characters.  Oddly enough, this alone brought me a new friend—by identifying Murtagh and Thorn (antagonists) as my favorite characters, I identified myself as part of a sub-group that loves these characters.  I then formally introduced myself in the newcomer forum.  This gave the administrators and other users a chance to say hi and exhort me to read and follow the rules. 

           

Next move, posting.  But not just random posting!  I specifically chose threads that I was interested in or had some knowledge in.  This way, I’d actually have something intelligent to add to the conversation.  As I had no interest whatsoever in the unrealistic cleanliness of Sloan’s meatshop, or why Arya is such a great heroine, I avoided those threads.  Rather, I picked threads such as discussions on writing qualities, Murtagh (of course), and predictions for Book Four.

           

And then, I released my secret weapon for acceptance: Humor.  There’s nothing quite like humor to make people notice you or respond to you on forums.  Humor had to be handled carefully though—I knew that if I insulted Paolini (the author) or the books too much in my jokes, other users would dislike me. 

 

Acceptance was marked by replies.  Once I was part of the community, people would reply to my posts, and I to theirs.  I found that humor proved an easy way to acceptance.  The people who read through the threads and participated in the conversations often enjoyed seeing a humorous post after a slew of posts that endlessly debated small topics in spirals. 

 

Oddly enough, disagreements of opinion were very common on this forum.  In fact, each thread was usually based around discussion and disagreement on various issues, such as  “Who will be the next Dragon Rider?”  (My answer: the Dark Lord’s latrine cleaner).  Everyone would state their opinion (occasionally in a poll) and would expound upon their position to their heart’s content.  Resolution happened whenever people grew tired of the subject and let the thread lapse into obscurity.  Having everyone agree on one position wasn’t the goal of the disagreements, and, as a result, most disagreements were very civil because everyone’s opinion was equally valid.

 

Overall, I found that the issues of individuality and opinions to be interesting.  Users’ individual opinions had more weight when they posted here.  However, users were less inclined to reach consensus or to change their opinions concerning subjects.  Also, I felt that the community was rather disjointed.  The users found connection on a shared interest (the Inheritance books), but set-up of forum discussion fragmented people according to their opinion.  I ended up comparing this forum to another one I prefer to visit, where the forum has shared activities/threads/discussions that serve to bring users together for common goals and purposes, thus making the community stronger.   

Sources

For my hypothetical paper, I chose the subject of Internet addiction, particularly its impact on college and high school age students.  I further restricted my focus to American students.  My search for sources took me straight to the OSU library’s article database.  Why there? 

 

1) Speed.  I can quickly search through lots of articles and abstracts to find the right sources I need.  Also, many of the articles have their full text available online, which allows me to read and take notes on them right away.  Waiting a week or so for the article to arrive via interlibrary loan can be a pain.  Especially if the copy of the needed article is accidentally sent to the OSU campus, not the OSU-Cascades campus, by someone who didn’t read an address correctly.

 

2) Acceptability.  The article database allows me to narrow my search to only peer-reviewed/scholarly journals.  This way, my sources are more acceptable to professors.  (Yes, that article in Reader’s Digest may be riveting reading, but I doubt the professor would accept it as credible information).

 

However, I must admit that there is a drawback…

 

1) Slowness.  Sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t.  I am a browser by habit—if I enter the library with the solemn vow to only get “1-2” books, I usually leave with 6-8 in my arms.  This problem still hits in article databases.  I see an article or a search term that looks interesting—but not necessarily relevant—and spend 5-15 minutes checking it out.

           

Most of the information I found was relevant and valuable.  However, two of the articles I chose were very short, and thus have less useful information.  Those two focused on internet addiction in students, while the third provided an overview—less helpful for the paper, but more helpful for my understanding of internet addiction.  Because I chose scholarly articles, which were written and reviewed by specialists and thus less likely to have errors.  My only concerns are that the range of these articles is very narrow, a result of not bringing in the expertise and theories of other academic fields, and that they may be too entrenched in the academic orthodoxy, and thus insulated from innovated ideas or research.  In other words, they depend too much on the ideas of other people in their field, and not enough on the ideas of people outside their academic field.  Postman touched on this briefly when he wrote about how technopoly and specialization create “experts”, who limit themselves to one field of study, and thus ignore the complexity of problems, intelligence, and other unquantifiable things that the scientific mindset tries to categorize and measure. 

           

The credibility of the sources is very important to me, as the sources’ credibility usually affects the grades and opinions of the professors for the paper.  First of all, almost every college professor who has assigned research papers to me has stressed an all-important requirement: PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES.  And, to make sure that I and the other students remember that, they repeat it.  PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES.  To judge credibility, I usually choose peer-reviewed articles, but I also look at the publication that the article appears in.  If my paper is looking at the historical side of an issue, and the article I’m looking at comes from a modern psychology journal, it probably isn’t relevant to my paper. 

 

However, some of my professors have become more open to alternative sources, such as internet sites.  In some cases, they’ve limited those sources to news sources, or internet sites that they themselves chose.  In one case, a professor assigned students to read from Wikipedia articles that he himself had written.  As long as professors keep strict guidelines on what is a credible source, I think this approach may work.  However, they have to be careful about pseudo-credible sources creeping in. 

 

But I think this leads to another issue—what exactly constitutes a credible source and how do we know?  A credible source is one where the author knows what he/she is writing about.  In school research, these are usually held to be scholars and groups of scholars, who double-check and corroborate each other’s facts and research.  In the business world, experience is the main mark of credibility.  But with the internet, sometimes it’s hard to tell if the writer of a particular document or website is credible, unless you know of that person’s reputation or are knowledgeable about the document’s subject yourself. 

 

Based on the sources I have (see the following), a professor might judge me as an orthodox and dependable student, but one who dislikes doing anything too innovative or unusual.  My three sources are all academically sound, and make for a run-of-the-mill boring paper.  (Though if professors want to read interesting papers, why don’t they assign interesting topics, or give more latitude to the students to choose topics?) 

 

 

Griffiths, M.; Miller, H.; Gillespie, T.; Sparrow, P. (1999) Internet usage and, ‘internet addiction’

in students and its implications for learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning,

15(1). 

 

Hansen, S. (2002) Excessive Internet usage of ‘Internet Addiction’? The implications of

diagnostic categories for student users. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18(2).

 

Block, Jerald L. (2008).  Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction.  American Journal of

Psychiatry, 165(3).  

Letters

For this assignment, I wrote to my two grandmothers.  The question of who to email and who to write to via email was an easy choice: my paternal grandmother doesn’t have a computer.   My maternal grandmother, Popo, doesn’t use the computer either, but at least there’s a computer in the house.   Snail mail was actually the best option for both of them, but instructions are instructions…

 

The first big difference I noticed was lettering.  The email used the standard Times New Roman typeface that every other computer in the US can use.  No personality, no individuality, no uniqueness.  For the snail mail letter, I wrote in cursive. 

           

Come to think of it, I always use cursive when writing to my grandmothers.  First off, they’re among the few people I know who can actually read it nowadays.  Secondly, they always use cursive when they write to me.  Their letters and postcards are probably the main reason why I can still read and write cursive.  Sometimes I think it’s a dying art. 

           

Anyways, cursive just looks a lot more elegant and personal, as though I spent time writing and thinking about the letter.  Cursive also shows personality more.  I real a book a few years back about handwriting analysis—apparently, the way we shape cursive handwriting reveals a lot of personality.  Even the way we loop a “y” can reveal lots. 

           

For example—if the writing slants rightward, the writer is more outgoing and sociable.  If the writing leans leftwards sharply, the person is introverted and anti-social.  If the writing is in the middle or has only a tiny lean to the right (accounting for cursive training, which teaches students to lean writing to the right), the person is well-balanced between the two outlooks.  Not that this analysis is always perfect though.  My own handwriting leans right, but only because I angle the paper 45 degrees to the left and write at an angle.  Technically, my handwriting leans left, but because of the way I slant my paper (a result of calligraphy training) it ends up slanting right.  So it looks extroverted, but it’s really introverted.

           

Maybe it means that I’m duplicitous. 

           

Another thing I noted about cursive is that it really fills up the paper.  I had the same amount of words for each letter, but the cursive “looked” much longer because it takes up more space.  The email looked really short in comparison.  Again, this goes back to the time-spent issue.  The snail mail letter looked like I had spent lots of time on it, while the email was so short that it looked like I banged it out in thirty seconds.

           

In tone, both the letter and the email were very similar.  They both had more old-fashioned structure (i.e. Dear Grandma at the beginning; a final paragraph that asked how they were doing, what was happening in their lives, etc).  I haven’t yet given up on the more formal tone in emails, and I don’t think my maternal grandmother has either.   

MySpace and Facebook

Something I’ve always wondered is how useful these sites really are.  I’ve used MySpace for a few years now, and I just set up a Facebook a few months ago so I could get in touch with friends and family that don’t have MySpace profiles. 

Although the Woodman/Smith chapter for last week did a pretty good job of organizing the types of identity creation—anonymity, pseudo-anonymity, and identity—I don’t think it captured the complexity of how identity roles are shaped online.  It’s possible to use a mix of these.  It could also be possible to make a false identity while trying to share true identity.

I find that, on MySpace and Facebook, sometimes what ISN’T revealed can be just as important or distorting as what is revealed.  I can choose what to show on my profiles.  If I want to show my true identity, I can honestly reveal what my general interests are, what books and movies I like to experience.  If I (or someone else) wanted to distort public perceptions of our identities, we could write down false information about general interests, post false pictures, and show other false information.

 

But I can also distort perceptions of my identity by withholding information.  In my case, some things are just too personal to reveal on a website, such as relationship matters, dreams (in which case people ought to be GLAD I don’t post my dreams on my profiles), and other matters too private to mention here.  In this case, it distorts the online image of myself by giving the impression that that part of myself doesn’t exist, that the part described in the “About Me” section is all that really exists of me. 

It’s my way of being honest about my “true identity” but also my way of keeping limited anonymity/pseudo-anonymity.  The people who just pop by my profile only see a person with similar interests to everyone else, someone that’s hard to pick out from the crowd.  It’s myself, but also just a representation of myself, an avatar that is me but not completely me.  Those people who actually know me in real life will see the profile as a representation of my “true identity,” which they already know.      

 

In a related case, the withholding of information might occur because there are things about myself that I don’t know.  Everyone has blind spots about themselves.  There are probably aspects of my personality that I’m not aware of, but that people who interact with me see plain as day.  Online, people at the other screen only see what I see about myself.  They can’t observe me directly, so they get a distorted picture of me because they can only see the limited knowledge I have of myself.  I observed this with a friend of mine who I kept touch with primarily through email.  On his profile, he appears to be a cheerful, gung-ho, American marine.  It gives no clue that he can be extremely thin-skinned at times…because he is not aware of it at all.  Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about this drawback to online profiles, except to be aware of it.  

           

Online Personas and Brad Paisley

Yes, he’s so much cooler online, but whose idea of “cool” is it? 

The main character in Brad Paisley’s Music Video (other than Paisley himself) uses MySpace to create an alternate image of himself that is much cooler.  It’s obviously not him, but he creates an online image of himself as he wants to be, and the kind of person that he thinks that other people will like.  Because he’s cool online, he can message and chat with all of the cool people he wants to hang out with.  But does it ever occur to him that the online people he’s chatting with are false, “so much cooler” personas themselves?

I have to say, the characters are much more interesting—that is to say, “amusing”—offline.  Then they have their individual quirks—the dork has his tuba and his lightsaber, the girl next door twirls her baton only at the risk of her own bodily well-being, and the parents…let’s not go there.    

Coming back to the idea of “cool,” the online persona creation in the music video subscribes to idea that there is a narrow type of attributes that equal “cool.”  He’s a singer, has abs of iron, lives in Malibu, has lots of parties, and drives a cool car.  This reminds me of another song performed by Nickelback, about how cool it is to be a rock star, and how everyone wants to be a rock star.  Obviously, not many people can or do fill this or similar descriptions of “cool.”

 

But with the internet, it’s now easy to create an online persona that’s “cool.”  If you don’t like the way you are, or don’t think people will like you the way you are, you can use the internet to create a “cool” persona.  That “cool” persona can be accepted by other cool people. 

This creates several conflicts and problems, though.  First of all, it reinforces the image of “coolness” as the ideal person.  As the false, “cool” personas proliferate, other people come to believe that they have to conform to the “cool” ideal.  Ironically, very few or none of the “cool” people seen online may fit that ideal! 

       

Secondly, cool personas reinforce dissatisfaction with a person’s true self, and allow a person to avoid confronting and dealing with this dissatisfaction with himself.  Why bother thinking about why you don’t like who you are, or why you’re afraid to be yourself, when you can be someone else online?  When problems are inescapable, we have to confront them, but when there’s an easy way out, we can ignore them. 

Thirdly, those people brave enough to be themselves online tend to be ignored by the people pretending to be “cool.”  Remember the music video—the characters only want to hang out with “cool” people.   They don’t want to chat with the people who are similar to their real selves and would like the characters for who they really are!  

Additionally, from my personal experience on networking sites like MySpace, eventually all of the “cool” personas start to sound alike.  They say the same things, send the same kind of glittery holiday e-cards, and have the same kind of pictures on their profiles.  It’s almost like having everyone vanilla or everyone chocolate, when we could be more like a bowl of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.  Except for the ear-wax jelly beans.

           

Internet Abstinence

The temptation is always there, so I took an extra step and turned my computer off for the full abstinence period.  No net, no spreadsheets, no computer solitaire…the whole day was a relief.  Abstaining from the internet made the whole day relaxed and removed the sense of urgency it gives to communication and tasks.

            Because I work from home and go to school online (there’s another phrase trying to locate the Internet in a place), I spend most of my workweek chained to the computer.  A few times before, I’ve turned off the computer on Saturdays, just to get a break, so by this time I’m used to internet abstinence. 

            On this Saturday, I found that net abstinence eliminated the sense of urgency and immediacy in communication and tasks.  With the internet comes the mindset to “get it done now.”  If I receive an email, there’s pressure to answer it as soon as possible.  If I want to look at website X, I can and usually feel like I should do it right then, because the internet makes it possible.  Often, I find myself switching from half-finished task to new task, or trying to multi-task.  While abstaining, however, life became less urgent.  If I wanted to research something or look on a website, it went on the mental to-do list. 

            Also, turning off the internet also cut off the urgency of certain types of communication.  I couldn’t receive or read emails/messages from my boss, coworkers, or teachers, which mean that I didn’t have to respond to or follow them until a few days later.  It gave me more time to communicate face to face with the people I live with, and conversations followed a more relaxed ebb and flow.  With the verbal conversation, the communication didn’t require a quick, thorough, snappy reply/message, but rather whatever came to mind at the moment.  And if something else came to mind a few moments later, we could pick the conversation back up and keep going.  Also, there was less pressure to hurry up and finish it, so we could move on to something else.  The conversations took as long as they needed. 

            I also felt like I had more time in the day.  Instead of half a dozen things popping up in the email or on the browser screen, all clamoring for my attention, all I had was one task at a time.  And the focus wasn’t on the time component of the task, but merely on finishing it.  Instead of thinking, “I have to do this now!” I could take my time.  Also, because I was prioritizing and not multi-tasking, it seemed as though I had more of a choice of what I wanted to do.

Filling the time was no difficulty.  I already had two swim lessons and some housecleaning planned for the day.  Oddly enough, I accomplished the cleaning and activities related to the lessons at a much more leisurely pace than I usually use when communicating on the net, but still seemed to have more time during the day.  I also found time to read, do some cooking, and move around more.  If I had to compare the internet days with the non-internet day, it seems as though I accomplished more and enjoyed more of my tasks on the non-internet day.