Yesterday, I became extraordinarily upset when my dsl broadband service – after four years of relatively continuous operation – went off at around 11:30AM and stayed off. Usually these interruptions ended in about an hour. I went to a friend’s house to blog on his WiFi, but I was surprised at how agitated I felt, almost as if part of me had gone missing.
In the process of this, I became enraged with Earthlink (my ISP) whose support left something to be desired. Finally, in the evening a tech support guy at Covad – the company that had installed my dsl – informed me I probably needed a new modem, but they (Covad) could not check this because they were only the installers. Even though I knew better – none of them are terrific at this – I surfed the net at three a. m… on dial-up, no less… looking for a new ISP. I even scheduled an appointment (now canceled) with Adelphia to install a cable modem two weeks from now (talk about desperation!). Meanwhile, Earthlink was launching a full-scale “trouble ticket” investigation…
Anyway, I fixed it all myself this morning. I won’t overly embarrass myself by explaining what was wrong – it was a little bit worse than the plug was out, but not much – and now dsl is working again. I am back to my more normal neurotic self because my electronic self is functioning fine. Dicey as this was and is for me as a middle-aged man today, people in the future are going to find the line between their electronic and biological entities even more difficult to draw. I’m not sure that’s a day we should look forward to.
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32 Comments
1. neo-neocon:I think, for young people, that day may have already come. Theoretically at least, you and I and others of “a certain age” have a chance of escaping this, because we still remember back to a day when we weren’t so electronically dependent. That day wasn’t even so very long ago in terms of our entire lifespan.
But in that short span of time some of us (and I most definitely include myself!) have become dependent on having a functioning computer around. Yes, we can survive without one, but it doesn’t feel good, does it?
May 10, 2005 - 9:43 am 2. Jim Bass:Roger,
Don’t knock the Adelphia cable modem. I’ve been using it here in Thousand Oaks since it was GTE’s “Whirlwind” service. It’s very, very fast and reliable.
May 10, 2005 - 9:44 am 3. ambisinistral:Let me guess… turn any external modems and/or routers off and then back on and then reboot the computer?
On topic, where would cavemen have been without there stone tools?
May 10, 2005 - 9:49 am 4. Scott:Power outages are always interesting. No computers or television. The neighborhood is always quiet. I will never wish for something like a long term power disruption. However, I always appreciate my electronics so much more after the short term variety. My daughter seems to do so much better than I too. Kids are so resilient. So much more than us old people.
May 10, 2005 - 9:52 am 5. David Thomson:ìI won’t overly embarrass myself by explaining what was wrongî
Some things are best left unsaid. Many (most?) of us have embarrassed ourselves due to our ignorance concerning the technological equipment in our homes. I still do not know how to program our VCR.
May 10, 2005 - 9:56 am 6. Roger:Jim Bass, I do not mean to cast aspersions on Adelphia cable. I haven’t tried it. My point is that all are good (but could be better) and all make you crazy. Such is the life we live.
ambisinistral, you guessed wrong, but not by much. Actually, I discovered there was something wrong with the phone jack. I connected the modem to an (of course unfiltered) jack in another room and it worked. I am now living with a fair amount of ethernet cable connecting the modem and router. Next to find someone to repair the office jack.
May 10, 2005 - 9:59 am 7. chuck:It scares me how much time I spend online. Is this life? My community is farflung over the internet while my neighbors, well, they are just the folks next door.
If anyone ever sets off an EMP bomb, not only will everything shut down, we will all go insane.
May 10, 2005 - 10:06 am 8. Knucklehead:Scott,
Power outages are always interesting. No computers or television. The neighborhood is always quiet.
Ooh, how I wish that were so. A pair of summers ago we had a storm pass through that took down so many trees my immediate neighborhood had the power out for 72 hours. My next door neighbor immediately cranked up a generator. After two hours of that noise I was wishing I knew how to call in an airstrike on that god-forsaken noisy thing. The weekly invasion of the mower and blower wielding lawn services is nothing compared to three solid days of listening to a generator next door when nearly all else is silent.
As for losing contact with the digital world… a week of it is heaven, maybe even two weeks. It would take me years to learn how to bear more than that.
May 10, 2005 - 10:22 am 9. Fausta:people in the future are going to find the line between their electronic and biological entities even more difficult to draw. I’m not sure that’s a day we should look forward to.
Fear not, Roger.
Here and at my sister’s home the younger family members are self-taught and well versed in all things electronic, and seem to be handling themselves well. I’m thankful they are, on both accounts.
In a few years, Madeline’ll be finishing the repair(s) before you even had a chance to locate your reading glasses. I know because that’s how it happened here!
May 10, 2005 - 10:29 am 10. Robert (New Victorian):From a slightly different angle–work at my (government) office pretty much STOPS during power/network outages. After a few minutes of thrashing aimlessly, people start gathering in groups to talk to each other. It’s the only way to occupy themselves while repairs are made–except staring at the blank screen.
And that way lies madness.
May 10, 2005 - 10:31 am 11. Fausta:Knucklehead,
I feel your pain.
Whoever invented those generators should be electrocuted with one. Having them forced to listen to the darn thing wouldn’t do, since they would become deaf or insane.
May 10, 2005 - 10:35 am 12. Ron Wrght:Roger,
Don’t worry we’ve all been there. Yes, I know the feeling is called withdrawal. I just went through this when our admin password got corrupted. It was definitely a disorientating out of body experience.
My recommendation for DSL is Dslextreme.
May 10, 2005 - 10:48 am 13. David Thomson:ìIt scares me how much time I spend online. Is this life? My community is farflung over the internet while my neighbors, well, they are just the folks next door.î
The same thing was essentially said about the automobile. Technological advances inevitably bring together people with common interest. Physical proximity is no long so important.
May 10, 2005 - 11:40 am 14. Richard Lawrence Cohen:I don’t think our generation is in a unique historical position, having to switch from the unwired to the wired state in middle age, and I think it may only become more stressful for future generations as the speed of technological progress increases — as they get biocomputers, quantum computers, and cyberimplants. And think of how many people in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation were always nervous around cars, and longed for the old days of radio serials. As ambisinistral’s comment implies, this kind of anxiety has probably been part of being human for hundreds of thousands of years.
May 10, 2005 - 11:43 am 15. Syl:It happens. It’s disorienting. Withdrawal is maddening. I think, though, that blackouts and computer problems are good in that they make us aware that we cannot take this stuff for granted.
When Isabel came through a couple years ago, we were without power of any kind for almost four days. I almost went insane because each time dawn came I fell asleep, but during the night I couldn’t sleep at all and there was nothing to do nor see. I figure since I survived that, my mental state is probably okay.
I’m pretty good about pc stuff, both soft and hard. But the last few weeks have been, well, hell. Finally fixed. Partly by me (replaced a harddrive, removed DVD reader and non-working CDR and replaced with new DVD/Cd combo recorder, new fan and housing) and partly by a pro (replaced video card whose fan was in its death throes, a problem I misdiagnosed).
During the days that I couldn’t use the pc at all, I’d wander around aimlessly and bored. I can only watch tv and read books so long without feeling guilty (hours spent at the pc, however, induce no guilt whatsoever;)
I have a cable modem. My download speeds from a good server are almost 500k/sec. Doesn’t get much better. But a few months ago it dropped drastically. Comcast insisted I had spyware. I insisted I have none. It took three phone calls over two weeks to get someone to come out. He walked in the door, didn’t say a word, replaced the old Toshiba modem Comcast had supplied with a new RCA and boom, cable worked again. The old modem wasn’t compatible with QOM256 which Comcast had just instituted but corporate didn’t know it/admit it yet. Sigh.
Sh*t happens. If it doesn’t kill us, well, you know the rest
May 10, 2005 - 11:49 am 16. Jamie Irons:Roger, you wrote:
…people in the future are going to find the line between their electronic and biological entities even more difficult to draw. I’m not sure that’s a day we should look forward to.
I disagree.
First, I think it is our destiny to merge with our machines.
Perhaps “machine” is too crude an image; think of machines at the level of the enzymes that, for example, replicate a strand of DNA.
Because that is where “machinery” is headed.
So there will ultimately be no “line” of any kind separating us from our “machinery” extensions, which will be ever so much more sophisticated than the crude, five pound Mac PowerBook G4 I am typing this on…
And we will wear (inhabit?) all this machinery no more bothered by, nor more conscious of, its presence than we now are of wearing our blue jeans and T-shirts.
Jamie Irons
May 10, 2005 - 12:28 pm 17. Jamie Irons:Oh, and Roger,
Sounds like a lot of us (I include myself) ought to “get out” more.
Jamie Irons
May 10, 2005 - 12:39 pm 18. Nick:When I am troubleshooting computer problems for either myself or others, I like to keep the following helpful hint in mind:
When you see hooves… look for a horse, not a zebra.
May 10, 2005 - 1:21 pm 19. Yehudit:I can quit any time I want to. Uh, yeah, I can go out in the sunshine, sure, uh, any minute now…. yeah, I know it’s time to go to bed, but I haven’t finished reading this comment thread….
What is scary about all this is how fragile the commercial internet is.
May 10, 2005 - 1:21 pm 20. photoncourier.blogspot.com:Societies are always dependent on their tools; it’s just the nature of the tools that changes. If you had been a Plains Indian, then an epidemic among the horses would have been even more disturbing than computer outages are to us.
As we become more dependent on personal computers and Internet connections, we just can’t afford the kind of outages and security problems that afflict so many people today. There needs to be much more emphasis on “robustness” as a design criterion, even at the expense of “features,” particularly those of a custesy nature. Diagnostic capabilities, to help in quickly localizing the source of a problem, need a lot of work.
It would probably be beneficial for the providers of PC software to hire a few people from industries who develop software which *must* work–elevator controllers, airplane autopilots, etc. There might be some transplants of knowledge and..more important..attitudes.
May 10, 2005 - 3:12 pm 21. reel cobra:I’m just thankful it’s not only me.
May 10, 2005 - 4:35 pm 22. beautifulatrocities:Get used to fixing it yourself. When my DSL went out during the winter storms, SBC repair routes you to India where the call center flunkies don’t even know if there’s a local outage. One told me I must have a virus & to erase my registry. Technophobe that I am, even I knew this was crap
BTW, it was THEIR fault
May 10, 2005 - 5:17 pm 23. Buddy Larsen:This has been a VERY comforting thread…the web has totally shattered my life-time habit of spending en-famille time manicuring yon yard, keeping vehicles spic n’ span, running pointless errands, reading paper newspapers and magazines, arranging sundry visually-encountered items for aesthetic efficiency, and stupifying in front of the boob tube. Sure, things look a little more slack than they used to, but I’m visiting the whole planet in the time-slot I used to fill keeping just one little living area about 5 times spiffier than nature intended it to be. After reading this thread, I’ll continue to resist with renewed passive-agressivism these familiar-looking but strange people in this house who keep trying to get me to try on that new extra-extra long-sleeved white jacket they bought for me.
May 10, 2005 - 11:18 pm 24. Peg C.:Same experiences here. Cable goes out, tempers flair and panic runs rampant in the house – not because of loss of TV but loss of high speed access! Now hubby says we need to buy a laptop before our trip to Vegas next month. (I refuse to bring my work laptop because I’m responsible for it and it also weighs 2 tons.)
We will become ever more dependent on and connected to high tech and ever more woeful when it goes awry.
May 11, 2005 - 5:17 am 25. Luther McLeod:Same here as well. We are starting planning for a cruise to Mexico in October, ‘unconsciously’ the first thing I was looking for in the brochure was what type internet access they have aboard the ship. Cannot anymore envision 7 days without hi-speed and/or visiting here. Sad really, I suppose, oh well.
Buddy LOL – long sleeved white jacket!
May 11, 2005 - 8:33 am 26. Archpilot:Chuck’s comment is the one that immediately came to my mind….I’ll be lost!:
I trust the news I get from scanning blogs.
I conduct much of my business, both personal and vocational, via computer.
Most of my family communication is via email.
Can I remember how to dial a phone?
Oh, yeah……those won’t work either!
May 11, 2005 - 8:39 am 27. Jonathan Sabin:I too have Earthlink and have been generally pleased with the service. I must confess, however, to a “D-uh” moment of my own. It involves activating the PPPOE. I had rearranged things in the office and after getting everything hooked back up, I forgot to log in (which I found out later is required for PPPOE to activate) and spent 3 hours getting progressively frustrated and about ready to pick up the computer and hurl it into a wall. The earthlink trouble shooter was more than happy to correct my mistake. Needless to say, it was a lesson that I learned well and will never make that mistake again.
May 11, 2005 - 3:02 pm 28. Brian H:Nick;
It’s “hoofprints”, not “hooves”. The latter would be attached to the relevant animal directly.
Next stage is free WiMAX everywhere. No jacks required.
May 11, 2005 - 5:48 pm 29. richard mcenroe:Roger ó Do you have a laptop? Maybe get one of those Verizon wireless cards Glenn Reynolds is always hyping as a lifeboat….
May 11, 2005 - 6:50 pm 30. richard mcenroe:When I hooked up with Earthlink, one of their features I noticed was that you could track how many hourse you actually spent online per month.
Seeing as how I don’t have internet at work, is 213 hours a lot?
May 11, 2005 - 6:54 pm 31. Cap'n Billy:For those of you who have DSL, I would strongly suggest you check out cable service. Cable lines are far more capable of broadband service than phone lines, and more reliable. For instance, when Earthlink offered DSL in my area some years ago I eagerly signed up, and was immediately disappointed. I see now that it was my phone lines, although the phone company had reported that they were capable of providing the service. After struggling with it for about a year, I signed up for cable service with Earthlink when it became available, and have been a happy camper ever since. My downloads are now averaging 500 – 600 kbps, and the service has been very reliable after a couple of occasions when there were some problems with the lines, owned by Time-Warner.
I share the positive opinion of several others here of Earthlink, with whom I have been for a long time, starting with MindSpring before they merged. The latest PC World customer satisfaction figures confirm this, giving Earthlink the highest rating.
May 12, 2005 - 7:38 am 32. Buddy Larsen:Omigosh, McEnroe, off-work online average 70 hours/day is way too much!
May 12, 2005 - 1:24 pm