General bloggery

Well it's probably an undisputed fact that I'm not a regular blogger, but then again I like to mull things over for a while before committing it to the blogosphere. In fact most of my musings don;t even make it this far.

I have recently been encountering some connection problems which left me feeling almost disembodied and it got me thinking... (Run while you can!) How dependant have we grown on our connectivity? Let's consider this: Most of us have easy access to the internet, so we are starting to take it for granted. Even in a horrible communications environment like South Africa. (We are seriously getting shafted by the teleco's! Some of the highest prices in the world!) At most times I have at least two broadband connectivity options available and if I'm on the road I can always rely on my trusty mobile (more often than not with 3G signal).

Yet what happened last week? Was at home, no broadband wifi installed yet and my cellphone fails to connect! Aaaaargh! There I was, no twitter (starting to become seriously addicted), no messenger, no google, nothing! I was seriously tempted to go find some way of connecting to the internet! Luckily I caught myself and the sight was almost sickening. I am a web addict.

But it's worse than that and the problem is not just restricted to yours truly. I still had access to DSTV and its supposed multitude of channels which should at least have offered me some decent entertainment. But how often have we all said "There's nothing to watch"? Sound familiar? Even with so much choice we don't consider it valid entertainment!

The problem is deep and has been slowly growing and getting worse over a period of decades. It's called specific content. 30 years ago you had 3 channels and that was considered great choice in entertainment. Now with 30 times as many channels, how can we feel so 'unentertained?'

We've slowly grown accustomed to more and more choice, and as our choices increase so our specific requirements grew. It's become so bad that we're able to at will retrieve from the web whatever tickles our fancy. Let your imagination go wild and still google will return some hits for you! What does that say of us and is it a good thing? I'm not sure but I'll admit to being perturbed by this realisation that I've become too picky with the content I choose to entertain me. With the fact that I depend so much on the instant gratification factor of it! And probably the worst of it all, that I felt lost without my connection and the useless feeling that I might be missing out.