Disconnect anxiety
 

There is an interesting tidbit on Arstechnica about the fact that more and more people get nervous when they are cut off the internet or without a mobile phone. I certainly belong to the group of people that suffer from disconnect anxiety when I'm off the 'net for more than half a day. How about you? What do you hate and/or love the most about being disconnected?

I can live without a mobile phone, but as you say, being cut off the internet, for a longer time period, is quite stressing. One thing I have noticed, when I haven´t had access to internet for a while at home, I tend to organize my HDD and clean it, so that´s a good thing!

I'm totally lost without internet!

I once was cut off for a whole week and it was just aweful. :(
Which is why today I now have 2 separate connections, so if one goes I just use the other, lol :D

They are both 6Mbit because I don't want to settle with less. Besides I have 2 machines, so they each have their own connection.

Edit:
There are days where I don't go online at all or even open my computer, but then it's my choise and not a broken connection!
As for phones.. well, to me they are only for short messages.
Except of course when or if you're totally in love and just HAS to hear your loved ones voice :P

I tend to be on the Web too much while at home, but when I'm elsewhere, I forget about it. It feels quite nice actually.

I recently bought a Nokie E65, which has built-in browser and WiFi. I use that far more than I expected. I have Fring on it so I can talk to my friends via WiFi/Skype almost anywhere. And when data rates are lower I'll get a subscription for that, so I'll have internet everywhere!

Me too, although I don't completely forget about my friends from this forum. I like to send them postcards from my vacations. :)

If I'm cut off from the internet, I'm also cut off from my favourite people. That's all there is to it.

If I'm cut off from my cell phone, I'm pretty indifferent. I hate phones in general, and only have a cell for emergencies. I'm also on a really cheap Pay As You Go plan, which gives me a convenient excuse not to talk to people for very long in the first place. Most of my favourite people are similar in this regard, so it all works out. :)

I have the same with the internet thing, but I also use my phone a lot just to chat or send SMS-es. I hate being disconnected.

Yup, me too. My entire Comcast went down a few days ago. After noting that the broadband was gone, I checked the TV and it was down too.

By the time I got home from work and was able to power cycled everything and the broadband came back. "Thank the makers!" I checked the TV and was still down. <shrug> I have DVDs.</shrug>

:D I find it amusingly ironic that I'm typing this post on my new phone (but I must do this to get better with the touch screen keyboard). Anyway, in some instances I do begin to feel disconnected from the world if I'm offline. But like lumi it doesn't kill me. I become less of a consumer of information and more of a creator and active seeker. Because I'm older I know how life was before the Internet, and by choice I haven't watched TV in over 12 years.

Will post more on this later, have to go to work. Ciao!

Considering how much time I spend online, I seem to mind being disconected surprisingly little.

When I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is switch on the computer, and the last thing I do at night is turn it off. I hate not being able to be on the internet, I use it for everything. It's my primary source of information, whenever I want to know something I can find it on the internet in two seconds. I use it for keeping in contact with people, I prefer to rush off an e-mail or instant message than phone someone. Even when I'm not doing anything in particular on the net, I still find it comforting to know it's there, in case something pops into my mind that I'd need it for, so if for some reason I get disconnected I feel uncomfortable. When I go on holiday despite the fact there are lots of interesting things to do and places to go, there'll still be some point in the day when I want to be on the internet, so I'll pop into an internet cafe to check my e-mail or Facebook.

I may have a slight problem, but to use a nerdy Star Trek analogy, the internet is a bit like the Borg Collective, and I like 7 of 9 can't stand to be cut off from the hive mind.

It's pretty stressful if you have to pay someone with PayPal on Ebay, and your connection goes down for almost the entire weekend.

--Erwin

Since I don't have any work obligations, I could sit at the computer most of the day and half the night (and have done so), but I decided a while ago to purposely shut down and go do other things, such as take a walk, read, dig in the garden, visit friends, make cards, write notes with pen and paper, watch a movie, or just sit and think. I've found that a balance is important for my well being.

I'm slightly similar, though I work part-time. I've decided to do a once-a-month holiday by the ocean (Venice or Santa Monica depending on the mood) where I will take pics, work on my writing, blog, and just enjoy the sun and air. All i need is my book to read, my backpack, phone (for picture taking and blogging), and lunch money.

There was an NPR story recently about the psychology of being tech dependent. I'll find it and post the link.

Interesting, thanks! It's quite amazing how dependant on electricity and clean running water our Western society has become. I read a lot of 19th century literature, and the trouble people had to go through back then to achieve the simplest things (like getting a message to someone who lived on the other side of the town, or showing someone who came visiting where (s)he had to sleep) is quite astonishing by today's standards. They had to spend so much time on things like that, and on waiting for answers! Life is so much faster now. I sometimes wish I lived in that era, because I think there were not as many stressed people back then as there are now.

Sorry, I couldn't find that news article. However there are many out there reporting similar things (a quick Google search will show), it's a collective psychological phenomenon.

I don't see why today you can't choose to slow certain details in your life down to a 19th (or even 20th) century pace. It can be as easy as turning your phone off or leaving it at home altogether. But most importantly it's a matter of communicating to everyone in your life that you will not be available 24/7 unless it's an extreme emergency.

This is what I was worried about before I finally got my first cell phone a few years ago (several years after everyone I know got one), that I would lose a great chunk of my private life. The very idea of a cell phone, a Blackberry, high speed internet, or wi-fi hotspot at your favourite cafe suggests the sacrifice of a decided final boundary of personal space and time. In effect, and in practice, you're telling the world that it can intrude on you anytime it wants to. And you actually want it to.

There are certain obligations or expectations whenever you receive a call, text message, or email, to reply to it immediately, and you may feel awkward or a bit guilty if you don't, as if you let the sender down.

Connection to the internet brings similar feelings, I think. It's readily available and it's all immediate for the high speed. In other words, instant gratification. And it turns us into consumers of information and communication, just as credit cards turn us into consumers of products and status. That gratification can be like a drug, feeding us little jolts of happiness whenever we want. And if we don't get it we have little withdrawal symptoms.

I agree with your post, and at home I often chose not to answer the phone, or a Skype message, and to schedule time for myself. At work, however, I can't do that. The workpace has increased tremendously even in the past ten years. Ten years ago I often went to the library to look for new scientific literature. Nowadays I can just download it and save 9/10ths of the time it took me to find literature in the olden days.