A couple of events have recently reminded me how much I am in the minority when it comes to how integral the internet is in my life.

#1. Italy

I recently was lucky enough to spend a week in Italy as part of a larger group. We spent the whole time in the southeastern region known as Puglia (the heel of the boot). While the trip was excellent, I had internet access exactly once. Our hotel claimed to have a wireless access point in the lobby, and while it would give you a local IP address, it never got you to the logon page. Calls to the provider didn’t help. I thought I was super smart when I convinced the people at the front desk to let me poke around the office looking for the access point to see if anything could be done. I thought maybe cycling the power would help. I was very excited when I found that the ethernet cable wasn’t even fully plugged in. On the third day the folks at the front desk finally revealed that their wireless provider had changed infrastructure sub-contractors and that the service hadn’t worked in a month. It wouldn’t work until the sub-contractor showed up with new equipment. I suggested they remove the prominent sign on the front desk and stack of brochures advertising the wireless service. The agreed that was a smart idea.

It hadn’t worked in a month. Almost nobody at the hotel knew or even cared. You would think that the lost revenue would be a motivator to keeping it working. (Don’t these guys get a cut?) You might think that the constant stream of guest complaints would motivate them to fix it. I’m guessing the entire set of comments from the previous month didn’t amount to how much noise I made. The internet cafes in town were all offline (uh how do they stay in business?) and even the wireless at the Bari and Rome airports weren’t working while I was there. The worst part however was that anytime I brought up the lack of connectivity everyone would look at me like I was insane. At first they thought it was cute that I was so geeky I couldn’t live without the internet. Then they found me annoying. To me of course it was like spending a week without electricity, hot water, or power. To them it was like I was complaining about having to drive my Porsche cause my Ferrari is in the shop. (Note: I have neither.) They just couldn’t relate. A large portion of my life is conducted with the help of the internet. That week, thos parts of my life slowed to a crawl. I will point out that one day at lunch at a hotel where they did have working wireless there was an endless supply of people from the trip eager to use my laptop to check their mail (and delete their spam).

#2. The Phone Tree

Yesterday we got what passes for snow in Seattle. Actually it was a sad mix of slush, hail, and a little bit of actual snow that barely managed to accumulate. But the moment anything beyond rain appears around here all hell breaks loose. People abandon their cars on the side of the road. (I’m not kidding.) THe real problem is not that we don’t know how to drive in crappy weather, it’s that the city doesn’t clear the roads, and most people here don’t know how to drive in snow. So even if you’re in good shape, someone else might do something wacky. Needless to say, school closings were a topic of interest in our house. We have young kids so this is the first time we’ve had to monitor the news. Their school is actually pretty good about posting status on their website, so watching the scroller on the local TV news or listening to the radio is officially passe. That’s why I was stunned to get a call at 6 this morning from another parent notifying me that the school was closed. This was the “phone tree” in action. A cascading hierarchy of parents call each other so that nobody accidentally goes to school when it’s closed. Of course the person that called me already knew that the school was closed from the website. And the two families I woke up also had already/were about to find out from the internet. Why does the phone tree even exist?

We’re at a funny time. The internet is absolutely core for a small percentage of the population. And yet the constructs that it is replacing still exist all around us – the phone tree, the phone book. But as much as the people I end up spending time with have completely integrated the internet into their lives, there are many people for whom the internet is still a novelty. And for some people those structures the internet is replacing are still necessary. Just not for me. I wonder how long this transition will last. For now I’ll just have to opt-out of the phone tree (assuming that’s even possible). I would suggest we eliminate it altogether, but for some reason I think people aren’t quite ready for that.