A word in defence of the Luddites
Monday, 31 December 2007
Ben and I returned from our Christmas Tour of England yesterday, having spent time with my family first in Liverpool and then his family in Derby. It was a gorgeously restful time and wonderful to catch up with a few friends who we hadn't seen for months. We arrived home in a mood of harmony and relaxation, only to find that some tiresome vandal had seen fit to yank our external phone line out of the wall, rendering us phoneless and broadbandless until after the New Year. Thank goodness for mobiles, that's all I can say, or we'd be practically cut off from the outside world for the next three days.
Ben initially ranted and paced up and down irately after this irksome discovery, since he'd hoped to devote some of his remaining holiday to researching C# (I always thought that anything connected with the concept of C# was my sole domain, and indicative of pieces of music that were in D major or similar, but it seems not. Evidently we have more in common than we realised), but has now calmed down and is perfectly happy to lie on the sofa with the cat on top of him watching Christmas TV and constructing a fantastic model of a mammoth which he received from his parents. And I have made myself a cup of herbal tea, in preparation for the New Year detox to which I shall shortly be subjecting myself (nothing extreme;I merely plan to cut out alcohol, caffeine and white sugar, which I read today is the “cocaine of the food world”. How very alarming!) and sat down at the laptop (offline for the first time in quite a while) to consider how the Merricks are destined to fare without the Internet until the nice gentleman from BT comes and reconnects us. For although the quip on the subject of mobiles and our reliance upon them was meant in jest, it's almost unthinkable these days that anyone living in the Western world might have to function for any length of time without Internet access. Having recently read a piece by Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC website (!) which he wrote after conducting a self-enforced Webless experiment over the course of a weekend, I am interested to see how our lives are affected, for better or worse, without this facility which is, after all, only fairly recently available.
When I was at school and university in the Nineties, the Internet and email barely existed as it does today. Having read The Cuckoo's Egg in an attempt to understand my husband and his profession better, I know it was actually around in its infant form quite a long time before that, but suffice it to say that communicating by email was then not the universal norm as it is today, and furthermore Wikipedia did not make any contribution whatsoever towards the essays I wrote for my degree. I did not own a mobile phone until I was 22 and in my first year of teaching, and even then it was the size of a small brick and certainly had no photographic or MP3 facilities to speak of. I spent my university years writing to and telephoning friends and family, and although email became progressively more useful and convenient the longer I was there my habit of writing to people never ceased completely. I became accustomed to sharing 10 communal computers in the college Computer Suite or Music Library, and didn't have the pleasure of Internet access at home until I got married in 2003 and Ben insisted upon it. It's safe to say, therefore, that the Web didn't play a large part in my life until fairly recently. But now, having been seduced by technology and its sheer convenience, I email friends far more often than I write to them, I consult news websites to keep myself up-to-date with current affairs and read a newspaper only on Sundays, and (bizarrely, for someone who loves books as much as I do) instinctively go online to search for a muffin recipe or the definition of a word or directions to a new place or a postcode or information, rather than reaching for a cookery book or a road map or a history book. We don't possess a dictionary, but I suppose we don't actually need one, since the Internet is at our immediate fingertips, day or night. And why phone the Postcode Hotline when you can glean your information from www.royalmail.com in the time it would take for an employee to answer the phone? And of course, there's always Facebook if you want to look at a friend's festive photos, write a quick note to a pal or 'poke' someone. All of this can helpfully be achieved at any time of day, in the privacy of your own home and without ever having to interact with another human being. Splendid!
So, as all these conveniences have been temporarily wrested from my grasp, and as Ben has hogged the TV (thus also preventing me from spending the evening playing the piano, which occupation would drown out The Shadow In the North), I thought I'd reflect upon the day's progress, since it hasn't exactly been an entirely normal, technology-reliant 12 hours in the Merrick household. Has Ben's irritation been justified? Should I go and make him a calming herbal tea as well, or should I be crosser than I am at the loss of my link with the outside world? Will the Facebook withdrawal symptoms be too great to bear as I simultaneously contemplate giving up caffeine for New Year?
Apart from checking my email and Facebook wall briefly whilst at my parents' house between 23rd December and Boxing Day, I haven't made use of the Internet for the best part of a week anyway before returning home and discovering we had been summarily disconnected, and I can't say I missed it particularly. At both family homes there was an abundance of TV, food, reading material and interaction with relatives and friends on offer, which seemed to replace the instinct to check for new email or breaking news every half hour. It was blissful to sit and read the whole of Noel Streatfeild's Dancing Shoes during the course of a day whilst my brother played his new xylophone, or lie next to my little sister on the sofa and receive a luscious head massage from her whilst watching The Holiday (Jude Law...yum), or spend an afternoon with my lovely friend Danielle catching up on her recent news, sharing a fudge brownie and shopping together for shoes. Most of the time my mobile was left upstairs in our room, and although I seized my mother's newspaper every day with great enthusiasm and devoured its contents, this was not because I was longing for news of the outside world; it stemmed more from a simple desire to read anything just because I have the time to do so at the moment. And once I had ascertained the names of the songs we were to sing at church this morning for which I would be playing the keyboard, there was precious little else of immediate urgency that made email indispensable, and since all incoming calls have been redirected to Ben's mobile, neither of us will be missing out on any important phone calls regarding the sale of our flat. Ben can't play Xbox Live for the moment, but surely there are plenty of other things to do. Aren't there?
Well, last night, we both cleared away the bulk of the holiday carnage (which took quite a lot longer than you might expect) and, having successfully served up some delicious home-made pasta, Ben then settled down to watch movies (inexplicably until 5am) whilst Mandu the cat and I snuggled down into bed with a good book. Church took up the whole of this morning, after which we enjoyed a nice lunch and the Sunday papers. Normally, there would have been a fair amount of varied Internet activity during the remainder of the afternoon, so alternative forms of entertainment had to be devised in order to fill the forthcoming Webless hours. I had earlier bought India Knight and Neris Thomas's 'Idiot-Proof Diet' and reading it immediately seemed like an excellent way to spend a morsel or two of my spare time. It is a predictably fabulous book; hilarious, yet packed with insights into the problems of overeating and indulging in unhealthy foods, the psychology of being overweight, and tips for good and controlled eating. I read it cover to cover in more or less one sitting, and have made a couple of white-bread-related resolutions along the way. Next, unable to log on to Facebook and wish friends an early Happy New Year, I instead sat down at the dining-room table armed with a Bic, some stamps and my new notecards (courtesy of the delightful Fiona Smail – thankyou!) and wrote several letters to friends, some of whom aren't Facebookers and who I very probably would have otherwise neglected in my correspondence for a bit longer. After dinner I pottered around and reorganised the seagrass chests in the bathroom which are full of miscellaneous toiletries, rearranged a few shelves to make room for the new books we both acquired over Christmas, framed some photos (the sheer joy of digital photography!) then finally settled down with Ben to play Scene It?, which is a movie-themed board game given to us by my brother, who has a talent for choosing appropriate and well-thought-out gifts. After an hour or so of pitting our respective film knowledge against each other (Ben won, unsurprisingly) it was definitely time for bed. Tomorrow, which will very likely involve a bit of baking, may see me consulting the muffin book I received in my Christmas stocking instead of going straight to www.muffinrecipes.co.uk (which I do recommend if you are in the habit of baking muffins and haven't had your phone line severed). There are more people I could write to and a lot of books I could, and want to, read. I found Wuthering Heights in the bargain bin of the annoyingly apostropheless Morrisons whilst staying in Derby, and that sounds like the perfect movie to watch in bed on the laptop tomorrow morning whilst I drink Earl Grey and languish under my lovely feather duvet. The Idiot-Proof Diet has reminded me that going for regular walks is a really good idea, so perhaps we could drive to Northumberland and make the most of our last days of holiday. And maybe the piano will finally get the attention it deserves in the evening, before we celebrate New Year's Eve.
I didn't just describe the events of the last couple of days so I could congratulate myself upon my ability to disengage myself from the trappings of modern life. But it's interesting to consider how habit-forming the use of the Internet has become, for me and for so many other people. Had it been available, I would have spent at least some of this and yesterday evenings contacting friends on Facebook, reading the BBC news and Times Online websites and generally surfing the web, which I love to do when I unearth a curiosity for any subject and want to know more. Instead, I'm unexpectedly happy to have had the opportunity to write to a few friends and family members, to have played a game with Ben and read a good book all the way through; the flat has benefited no end, too, as I've had time to give it a good clean and tidy before the dawn of 2008. Without the distraction of the Internet, I've been 'forced' into doing things I really love doing (things I would have been doing anyway if I'd been born fifty years earlier than I was, given the lack of information technology available in the middle of the twentieth century). So, is the development of technology a good thing or not, given that is has seemingly been luring me away from other, more beloved, activities for the past few years? Ought I to turn off the wireless router every night and give myself and Ben a regular spell of Internet-free time during which we can indulge in other merry and worthwhile pursuits, or is this unnecessary and ridiculous self-deprivation given the modern times in which we live?
I recently read a thought-provoking column in the Sunday Times on a closely related subject: that of the demise of writing things by hand and its associated drawbacks, such as the fact that a lot of teenagers can apparently barely wield a pen or spell correctly nowadays, thanks to Microsoft Word and the increasing popularity of text messaging. In some cases, this is undoubtedly true, and is one of the disadvantages of everyone owning and using a computer for almost every possible purpose. You could also argue that the time and effort it takes to contact a friend using email, text or Facebook is far less than than if you had written a proper pen-and-paper letter, and since it's the thought that counts, it must follow that you are demonstrating greater affection for the friend by getting out the writing paper instead of the laptop. Although I can understand this way of thinking, and would personally rather receive a letter than an email, I realise that it's the latter or nothing with some of my more techologically-savvy (not to mention busy) friends, some of whom probably haven't handwritten anything in years apart from a shopping list. And clearly we'd all prefer an email over nothing at all. But equally I can hardly expect my 92-year-old grandfather or Ben's relations who belong to the same generation to keep in touch with us using the Internet. Mother Muir is just getting into Facebook, but I expect she will always write to or phone me given the choice, and I much prefer it that way. But, having said all that, I want to be able to shop and pay bills online most of the time because it saves time and makes my life easier. Ben and I had a rather heated 'discussion' about the relative merits of technology at the dinner table recently, and although we were debating on opposite teams we finally reached a compromise: that the romance and beauty of 'old fashioned' ways were worth keeping because of the pleasure they bring, even at the expense of convenience. A cutthroat razor doesn't do the job as well or as quickly as an up-to-the-minute Gillette, but there's something wonderful about using one every so often. A real birthday card may be less environmentally friendly than an e-card, but it's still lovely to receive and display in your home as a reminder of the friend who sent it. It's good to take the time every so often to go and feel the fabric of and try on a new poloneck jumper, holding it up against yourself to check the colour genuinely suits you, rather than ordering online every time just because you can always send it back if it's not right. Surely it's possible (and desirable) to maintain both a blog and a diary, handwritten in a gorgeous notebook. And wouldn't it be brilliant if you could phone up to pay your council tax or inform the TV licensing people of your change of address and be miraculously connected to a human being, instead of an automated response that can't cope with regional accents or the concept of houses that have been divided into flats, leaving you incandescent with rage at the lack of convenience this 'service' is supposed to be providing?
As far as I'm concerned, technology's good in its place, but it's essential to retain the human aspect of everyday interaction. For one thing, if you do everything online, you'll end up never talking to anyone. No wonder communities and neighbourhoods aren't what they once were. So I for one am going to keep recycling like mad, so no one can accuse me of contributing towards the planet's slow death with my romantic, paper-mad ways, but I won't be parted from my books and newspapers. And, although email and Facebook are fabulous inventions, they can't replace the joy of meeting up with, hugging and talking to a family member or old friend. Although I will need to consult Wikipedia if I want to learn a bit more about the Luddites...
posted by fiona @ 15:59
