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Losing a Lung
As a popular saying goes, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” Since I cracked my laptop screen about two weeks ago, I can understand what that saying means. I’d always been so used to having my laptop instantly, whenever I wanted it. All I had to do was sit down at my desk or pull it out of my bag. I could do anything I wanted to—connect to the internet, check my email, check Facebook, work on homework, check Facebook while I should have been working on homework, read the news, read blogs, or just search through YouTube looking for mindless entertainment.
Now, all of that is gone. Well, it’s not gone exactly. I can still do all of those things, but instead of always having a computer with me, I have to trek out to the library or Mac’s lobby or the Affinity Commons Building. After two weeks of not having a computer on hand to instantly satisfy my whims to type up a poem or go online, I’m beginning to realize exactly how much time I spend using computers.
I’ve also realized just how much of that time was probably wasted time. Yes, Facebook is a nice way to keep updated with old friends from high school, but I really don’t need to spend an hour searching for just the right Bumpersticker or Piece of Flair to send to everyone on my “Friends” list. I also do not need to check my email every time I get to my room, a habit that I had when my laptop was working. I probably checked my email over fifteen times a day. There are a few perfectly good reasons for that: professors send updates about assignments, my parents check up on me, and the various clubs that I belong to give meeting schedules. But, at the AWP conference in Chicago, I went two days without using the internet. When I got back to Ada, I had more than thirty unread messages in my inbox, over half of which I deleted without even reading. The rest of them did not require my immediate attention. When I checked the blogs that I read, only one of them had been updated, and the post really wasn’t that interesting. As far as my homework was concerned, I had only two assignments that actually required a computer because they had to be typed, and I still could have written drafts of them out by hand. The same idea applies to any of my own personal writing that I might feel inclined to do.
So, if I really don’t need a computer, why do I feel this sense of loss because my laptop is broken? Well, I think that, despite my two days without a computer, our society likes to think of itself as technologically dependent. We feel like we always need the newest of anything, whether it’s the latest news update, the latest email from home, or the latest status on Facebook. There’s also a social component to this rush to know what’s going on, as though it were that dramatically different than it was an hour ago. Our culture now seems to revolve around the internet, and when my friends tell me that I absolutely have to watch this new YouTube video or read a new blog post, I can’t anymore. The studious ambiance of the library makes me feel obligated to actually get some work done when I’m on the computer instead of just wasting time, besides the fact that blaring YouTube videos in the library while everyone else is trying to study would be rude.
Until I get a new laptop, I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to being out of the internet loop for a while. Really, I know that it’s probably good for me. Since breaking my laptop, I’ve been more motivated to get work done, I’ve spent less time on the internet, and I’ve found more intellectual ways to waste my time, like reading. Still, I can’t help but feel that I’ve lost something vital and I can’t wait until I get my new laptop so that I can return to my old habits of checking my email fifteen times a day and watching the new YouTube videos that everyone keeps making jokes about. I know that it’s not good for me, but like smoking, I’ve found that it’s a difficult habit to quit.
In M.T. Anderson’s novel Feed, everyone in the world has become so dependent on computers that they actually have them installed, as a chip, into their brains at birth. When the main character, Titus, meets a man who does not have this chip, called “The Feed,” but instead has to carry around a laptop-like machine, Titus compares the man’s condition to having a suitcase with his lungs in it which he would need to unpack every time he wanted to breathe. The novel is a satire on modern technological dependence, and I can’t help but think that Anderson is right, especially since I’ve often found comparing my losing my laptop to losing a lung.