The internet is wonderful

byLynneHickey

163 followers

11 years ago

I have just had a wonderful and also an awful week-end. Wonderful because it was spent with family and that's always a feel good factor in my book, but awful because on Friday night my internet just went haywire and I haven't been able to connect properly til minutes ago.

It's like many things that we take for granted, they are great til you have to do without them. Obviously quite apart from WA, there is e-mails, social media and just generally catching up with events from around the world as well as at home.

Which made me think about the old joke about 'back in my day things were different, but much better'. Well obviously they were different as nothing stays the same and everything evolves - sometimes for the better and occasionally not so much. Take computers, as an example, they have completely revolutionised how we live and work. Gone are the days when friends just knocked on each others doors to play outside, now children either have their head in a computer or mobile phone connected to the internet.

One of the saddest things I see is when my daughter and I go out and see very young children being totally ignored because the parents are glued to the mobile phone. We have an understanding that mobile phones are banned, especially at a restaurant unless it is absolutely necessary - for instance, my daughter has applied for university and was waiting for a reply on her phone and so she did have it out on the table, but refused to acknowledge anything other than a message from the university. It's just so good to just talk.

Is it too much to ask that people just put their phones and the internet on hold for a short while in order to spend quality time with family? Apparently it is for most people.

Back to my week-end and I was pretty angry that I couldn't connect to the internet to check my e-mails,but especially not being able to connect with the WA community. It's so important to see what everyone is doing and saying and I missed you all for three days.

I am glad to be back among you and I'm actually smiling broadly as I write this.