The internet in my home (and incidentally, my office as well) has been out of access since Thursday afternoon. The router provided by Verizon for their Fios service died for no obvious reason. A call to Verizon proved nearly fruitless since they are apparently the only company out there who isn’t able to ship hardware overnight. And, since they can’t seem to fill service request correctly the first time, we won’t see a repair until Tuesday at the earliest.

But, as much as I love the opportunity to broadcast to the world my dissatisfaction with Verizon, it’s not really the point of this post.

I’m a member of a generation that uses the internet for literally 95% of all tasks. Even the most basic tasks like checking the weather or keeping track of a calendar. Almost none of us notice this. I sure don’t. Well, at least not until the cord is cut and I realize there’s almost nothing I can accomplish without heading out the door to a local Starbucks.

It’s not that I don’t know how to look up a definition in an actual, physical dictionary. It’s that I’m so accustomed to doing it in a single click, I can’t imagine the information being worth all the extra work, compared to what I’m used to.

For example, I needed to know the times for a movie this afternoon. When I remembered that I didn’t have any access to the internet and faced with the possibility of having to dig through a newspaper to find out the show times, I actually considered the possibility of just scrapping the movie idea altogether. I think that’s pretty silly.

But it’s also had me thinking that this level of reliance on technology may just be historically unprecedented. It’s something that our ancestors couldn’t even begin to relate to. Heck, even the generation right before us has difficulty with it. The idea of being able to ‘search’ the bible for anything in only a matter of seconds is something that might have given Martin Luther an aneurism. Yet here we are.

I know some people would claim that it’s a bad development in this generation. And maybe it is. But I think it’s more likely to prove the benefits outweigh the costs. Just not sure what that will look like yet.

Of course, for right now I’m just annoyed that I have to write this blog from Starbucks instead of the big comfy chair in my bedroom. Oh well. C’est la vie, I guess.