I was at a party last night, telling a friend that i was going up to Tahoe to work for the weekend. As our conversation progressed, i asked him why he doesn’t use AIM. He told me that it is equivalent to putting crack in front of an addict so he refuses to install it. This is how i feel about broadband and cable in general.

In theory, i could turn off broadband. But i never do. And even when i’m in a remote location, avoiding the Internet, the first thing that i do is see if i can get connection. There’s something nice when it says “no” in return. I feel this odd sense of relief, mixed in with the normal anxiety about being offline.

I miss having to log in to the Internet. There was something ceremonious about it, something that made it feel like a connection instead of an addiction. By default, i was offline. I could CHOOSE to go online. Now, it’s an addiction and i have to avoid it.

Frankly, i miss the time when there was a cost to logging in. I felt the clock ticking, felt the cents running away as i paid per minute. This motivated me to engage with the Internet with a purpose, not to lag. Get the answers to my questions and move on. Now, there’s no hurry; i pay per month.

I would pay someone to charge me per minute for my broadband, someone to force me to self-regulate, to gain control. Of course, it’s always the institutions that shouldn’t encourage me to avoid that do this most successfully. Take BART. I often fail to take BART because i haven’t pre-paid for it.. i might as well drive. But if i had a monthly pass, i would never drive. Why is it that public transit knows how to motivate me to not participate while the Internet just calls me in. Ah, economics and the twisted way in which our society encourages us to be commercial.