Back off, Google

I have a love/hate relationship with the Internet.

I mean, I must love it, considering I pay exorbitant amounts for my phone bill each month just for the ability to Google urgent questions (what’s the other guy from Wham’s name?), or to end heated arguments (obviously Fleetwood Mac was more commercially successful than Led Zeppelin), or to watch life-changing videos (Llamas with Hats).

But seriously, I think the Internet is ruining my ability to function in real life.

If the Internet shuts down suddenly due to some virtual apocalypse then I’m screwed. I won’t be able to sleep because I’ll be up all night wondering what the lyrics are to some Bloodhound Gang song. I won’t be able to leave my house because I don’t know how to check bus times without www.winnipegtransit.com.

I won’t be able to register for classes and I won’t be able to buy my books and I won’t be able to choose my professors based on the questionable reviews on the Rate My Prof website!

Basically, I’d be doomed.

It’s entirely possible that I read too much Sci-fi and a few too many apocalyptic stories, but seriously, we have no back-up plan in case the Internet explodes. (It should be noted that I still cannot fully comprehend what the Internet is so I’m not entirely sure that it can explode, but I’m guessing that if something bad happened to the Internet there would be explosions at some point.)

E.M. Forster wrote “The Machine Stops” in 1909 and basically predicted Facebook. He invented a dystopic future in which people never actually saw each other in person but interacted with each other via a virtual screen with lectures broadcasted into each person’s separate room.

It seems we are at the half-way point to Forster’s eerie future vision. Now we must manage both our real lives and our virtual lives and the lines are often blurred.

People are often so concerned with updating their Facebook status when something interesting happens (or something disturbing- seriously who writes status updates about their abortion? There’s a line, people) in their lives that they aren’t fully experiencing the moments that occur in real life.

I hate being perpetually attached to my phone and to the Internet and to Google, but there is no other way to exist anymore, especially because the alternative would be that I’d probably turn into one of those (non-violent) manifesto-writing recluses who lives in the woods and stops worrying about hygiene but becomes transfixed on Machiavellian politics.

Since there is no way out and we have no back-up plan, I’m half-hoping for an Internet apocalypse.

At least then I could stop feeling like I have a split personality and that weird guy named Google would stop stalking me, showing me advertisements of pretty things he somehow knows I’ll love.