Recently, I asked Jody Reale to send me photos of her retainer dressed up in doll-sized Christmas outfits, when she confessed to me that she had reached an "Internet Saturation Point." It occurred to me that I had, too. It's happened to her because she's 76, and it's happening to me because I'm rapidly approaching 76 though, thankfully, I'll never catch up with Jody because that's impossible...unless...Einstein was right! But even then, it's impossible. It would take a bolt of lightning to provide the power we need!
Also, a 35 year old PhD told me today that "you kids call them landfills now, but they used to be called junkyards. Landfills is a modern term, we didn't have them back then." Amazing what an extra $60,000 in tuition can get you.
So now that we've all had this current version of the Internet, at variable speeds, for a solid 10 years, let's discuss. The Saturation Point. Enough is enough. Email becomes just a bit too much, friendships that have moved from occasional phone calls and sporadic letters has evolved into nothing but mindless email forwards or, worse, more contact via email than you've ever had with people in your life leading to a strange sort of drunken, late night dependency that, eventually, degrades the friendship into something weird. When you see the friends again on a holiday, you feel odd not emailing them and misspelling "the." You almost want to pronounce it "teh" everytime you use it in normal conversation.
Not a problem if the friend is in the next office building, or is a relationship spawned from the net, of course. And that latter point, there, is an odd duck, isn't it?
Junk mail, in the normal world, is nothing. It's flung into a trashcan without a thought. A wound you haven't yet noticed and, so, don't feel. But junk email...it's a personal and violent invasion. Great pain is taken to avoid it. That small corner of your life can be toppled by it.
Entertainment. Your little handful of shows and musical niche is suddenly invaded with mass availability. Tony says I need to check out these commercials from Russian TV aired in 1982. Okay! And it's a gateway drug. One moment it's anti-American propaganda and, the next, it's 170 gigs of anal fisting dwarves in Spain.
"I don't know if my wife left me because I started downloading off the net or if I started downloading off the net because my wife left me."
Meanwhile, there's keeping up. Not just with the Joneses, but with your own private interests. Those constantly updated webpages, the endless, revolving content. News updated secondly, and told in a thousand different voices. The forum with hundreds of members where your marked threads are on the third page before you finish your phone call with Amazon asking why your package was fucked up.
Suddenly you realize that you're on all day and all night. Just a few years ago, you logged on to check email. Maybe an hour a day. But, god, get off the phone! Calls might be coming through. Not anymore. Who calls you? Aunt Dotty. And you don't answer that call.
Now, you don't get calls, do you? That book contract, that editor, that agent, that Cd you ordered, your cousin Sally, your friend next door and another friend in Bangkok, as well as your food order for the week are all on email.
It's an extension of the too much input-ADD argument that you often hear.
