Damn You, Technology.

The Internet: Do I love it, or do I hate it?




Let me start out with a small story.



When I was about 7 years old (in 1988 to be exact), I remember getting a high score on Nintendo's Tetris. The game indicated that I needed to enter my name as the number one player.



I wasn't fully aware that my name was visible only to those who played my particular copy of Tetris. My young mind assumed the whole world saw my incredible block-puzzling feat.



Then it dawned on me: What if I could get a high score and then write a message to someone rather than my name? That way I could send messages to family members in other states! Move over Al Gore, because I think I had just invented e-mail.



Whether it was ingenuity or precognition, I have to award myself four out of five iPad 2s and a lifetime of Verizon service (because we all know the sorrows of AT&T connections) for my communication insight.



Leap forward about 23 years and you'll see me not only sending messages to people in other states via electronic devices, but also being dependent on those devices. Who would have known that my creation would have become the monster it is today?



In today's world, if I can't get an internet signal then I can't get anything accomplished. I think it's safe to say the same can be said for a good portion of the American population.



How many of us can get an assignment completed without the help of the Internet?



It's true that connecting to the web is often the bane of my existence. Take Blackboard for example. Every time I log in to the so-called collegiate tool, I feel as though I'm entering the first circle of Hell. Circles two through seven all exist in CIS, but we'll reserve that for another Skewed Review.



Even though I despise Blackboard, and subsequently any class that uses it as its primary resource, I have to admit I'd be lost without it. So many of our classes now utilize Blackboard in one form or another that if I were to simply turn it off, it would result in near immediate grade dropping.



The same goes for almost everything the Internet has to offer. Once it's gone, I just can't get anything done.



So in this respect I'm going to have to give the Internet a split review: two-and-a-half years of having nothing but the highest qualities intended by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and two-and-a-half years flaunting every downside imaginable (and blaming it on Al Gore).



This past weekend I found myself with sparse Internet access and actually woke up one morning to discover my home Internet connection suddenly was nonexistent.



OK, that's fine I guess. I suppose I could work on some homework that doesn't involve accessing the web.



Oh, snap.



Math? Well, I'm using Hawkes Learning System, which an awesome learning tool unless you're not connected to the internet. English? Dang. I really need to connect to Ebscohost to do some research. Newspaper editing? Either the news will be available three weeks from now or not at all, because unless writers are willing to put a stamp on an envelope and mail their work to me, it's not going to get edited.



And as for me, I am sick. Not just of school, mind you, but am literally body-aching, nose-blowing, in-the-bathroom-constantly sick. But because I can't connect to the World Wide Web from my home, I have to pack up my laptop and head to school.



Now the rational part of me knows the loss of Internet connection is most likely due to inclement weather interfering with my satellite service. But the irrational part of me wants to blame a specific person.



Of course no one can be blamed for the weather, so in my little imagination I like to come up with some little dwarf who runs around making it rain and turning off people's Internet.



So therefore, you evil little gnome, I have a review for you: forty days and forty nights on a boat with a menagerie of varying species (and varying sizes of excrement) with absolutely no way to update your Facebook status.



Yes, my sickness is causing me to get biblical.



It just goes to show that when all is said and done, I am actually one of the people I complain about most: Internet geeks.



So as much as I may complain about people's Internet addictions, and although I am constantly annoyed by online gamers, I have to admit that without the Internet I am lost.



I would tweet my current sorrows but, well, you know.