Phanatique

Don’t worry! This is not another “apocalyptic” scenario. The Internet is still with us. However…what if?
Can we imagine our life without internet? Hardly. Internet has changed us profoundly.

Internet has changed our way to perceive us and our way to perceive the others. We love to share our thoughts, our experiences, our daily events with all the world. We are our own editor and publisher. We share our locations, make recommendations, share our readings, bookmarks, favorite food, favorite brands and many other things that fill in our online profile. Now we have an online “identity card” which can tell everyone a lot about us. Internet lets us know a lot about the others also.

Internet has changed the way we interact with the others. We rarely see our friends face to face, but we can reach them any time online. We have good friends at large distances, friends who we have never had the chance to meet in person. We use to classify people, to categorize them, based on their online behavior. The “first impression” on people is an online one. Only after that, we take the decision if we want to meet, work, do business or have a romantic relationship with that person.

Internet has changed our way of learning, evolving, choosing a career. We don’t read material books anymore – just ebooks, we don’t buy newspaper – we read it online, sometimes we don’t look outside the window to see the sun – we find online the weather report.

Internet has changed the way of doing business. We simply can not imagine how to run a business without internet. And it is useless to say more about that.

Other major changes in our lives brought by the internet: our way to discover the world (everything is at a click distance), our behavior as consumers (we take the decision to buy something after online reviews for that product, after posts on forums, blogs, etc), our personal hobbies are pretty much satisfied online (music, movies, books, art) and so on…

Generally, our behavior, our way of life is changed. There are just a few things that we can not do online, for everything else we have the World Wide Web.

So, what would we do without Internet? We would feel crippled. Something fundamental for our existence would be missing. We are very close to the point of updating Descartes’ philosophical statement: I am online, therefore I exist.

Sometimes, I miss the good all days when I used to meet with my friends at a cup of tea more often, when we used to play cards at a table, when I used to take long walks on the streets and look people in the eyes, when I used to read printed books, when everything was less virtually. I really miss all these. However, I could not imagine my world without internet.

Probably the best ways for not missing a thing is to take all the opportunities that internet is offering us and not forget to step away from the computer, laptop and phone for few hours a day and see the beauty in the real world too. Because it is a beautiful world outside and it is a great pity to miss it. I will set a reminder for that on my organizer, just in case one day I forget about it….

Now something to think about: if you have one fully day without internet, what would you do with it? Any offline activities that you miss?

Tags: internet, major change, online, online behavior, online profile, scenario

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