Internet-Lite

I’m in Mendellin, Colombia for four days. I had hoped to take a break for a bit but I can’t because 1) things (potentially good things! but still things) have come up. 2) I’m behind from being sick before I came, and it taking 2 days to get here.

The hotel internet is terrible. It’s really slow. It took nearly an hour to download a 2 minute video I needed to watch. As I try to put the next issue of Technically Speaking together, Google Docs keeps freezing. Dealing with my email took 2x as long as it should have.

I couldn’t live like this all the time, mostly because I can’t work like this. But every so often I like to experience life with poor internet connectivity. I think it makes me more empathetic as a developer, more attuned to the offline case, more sympathetic to those who live with poor internet every day.

It also makes me more aware of my own habits of mindless consumption. Endlessly clicking on things. My impatience when something takes time to load so I just find myself opening MOAR TABS instead. Why it is that I can’t just accept that I won’t be able to see that picture of an adorable hedgehog, or animated GIF of a hyped-up squirrel?

But I think the best thing about being without internet is that it forces me outside to go and explore, and reminds me that I don’t need the internet to create.