Do You Remember What We Did On Our Computers When We Had No Internet?

This week we have seen Robert Scoble accused of playing Solitaire on his computer while sitting as a judge in the startup competition during LeWeb conference in Paris. Later on Robert explained that he only played two games during the session where he was not even a judge of himself but I don’t really care about what he did and what he did not as I was neither in the audience, nor among the startups. Besides, I have a feeling that Robert must be as good in multi-tasking as everyone in this business is so I would not judge as I often abuse multi-tasking myself.

The only thing that is actually interesting to me is that normally one does not expect a technology personality like Robert Scoble to be engaged in something like playing Solitaire at such a big techy event like LeWeb. Usually people criticize Robert when he sits on a panel constantly refreshing FriendFeed and updating his feed with the latest news from the event he is at (which the FriendFeed community is usually very grateful for while the even audience is unhappy) but this time he chose a triviality like Solitaire? Is not it strange? But he is actually said to have good reasons for that as the entire conference was left without internet access for the entire first day due to what sounds like a terrible problem with Swisscom.

Again, I don’t really care about what Robert really did on his computer at that particular moment but this made me thing about a very simple question: what does one really do on a computer these days when left without internet access? Really, we now seem to be online almost always with even airlines beginning to provide Wi-Fi access right during the flights. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time I had to use a computer and was offline (except for the flights without internet access as this is not all that common yet) and I don’t think I’m the only one who will hardly remember a no-internet day.

I still remember the days when I had a dial-up access at home and even that connection was far from stable so when I managed to connect I had a certain list of tasks I needed to accomplish online while the largest portion of time was spent offline only, doing something based on the information I found online. That was back in my university years (not really that long ago) yet it seems to have been ages ago as the difference is just plain amazing to me.

Yes, back then we seemed to have tons of things we could do on a computer and we spent hours attached to it without actually browsing the web, checking emails or sending endless tweets. Exactly what did we do? Obviously, we had some work to do - you know, editing documents and spreadsheets in the usual desktop office applications (really, we did not even have online office applications at the time), we played endless games and were really happy about the endless opportunities a computer provided. It is no wonder that after typing my first papers in university with a printing machine the opportunity of correcting a typo with pressing a couple of keyboard keys definitely looked amazing to me. And I’m quite sure I was not alone at the time feeling a computer was the best thing invented since sliced bread.

But now when you are trying to do something on a computer with a dead connection do you sometimes feel that you a facing a useless piece of metal and plastic and that you have absolutely nothing to do without accessing the world wide web? I really do feel this way almost always when I am left without internet and I spend the first few minutes trying to figure out where to start at all while usually I know that I should start with Twitter.

I have a feeling that I am not alone in this feeling either as many of us seem to only be able to work when online claiming that access to email, IM, web office applications, Twitter, and blogs is a must for us to have any work done (though some of us realize perfectly well that oftentimes some of these tools will only prevent us from actually having things done but we will never admit it in public).

So what are we left to do now without internet connection? Sure, we may still be able to do some editing of documents (well, those of us who still have office software installed) but usually we feel like no documents will be completed without additional online research or consulting someone you can ask for an advice on Skype. Really, I think it is great that I can access my feeds in offline mode with Google Reader as it’s the only way I can still feel like doing something online without actually being connected - if not for the partial feeds it would have been perfect.

And yes, I do know that there are still people who spend the same endless hours playing video games - but it is not that frequent these days as the majority of people seem to find way more entertaining things online. Even games have become way better by moving online than they used to be in the disconnected past. Seriously, how many games do you have installed on your computer? I only have one (mahjong) and it is only for those long boring long-haul flights if I have no writing work to do (which happens quite rarely).

Sure, people of certain professions do have things that they can do without having the obligatory internet access. Like writers still can write offline postponing research for when the connection is back again (and no, of course I don’t suggest going to a library, no worries) and graphic designers still can work on their creative projects without checking their email accounts all the time. But I know that even people of these professions (as well as many others who don’t seem to really need to be online except for checking email once or twice a day and looking up a fact or two on Google occasionally) are getting dependant on various internet tools - both for work and for pleasure. Like freelancers using tools like Freshbooks for online accounting and everyone switching to Google Calendar and Remember The Milk for our scheduling and planning. And of course we really can’t live without Twitter these days (I have already seen people describing themselves as semi-pro tweeters) so internet connection is really something we can’t live without nowadays as it’s really hard to imagine working on a single task without any interruptions for a whole hour without checking email or Twitter stream at least once. But come to think of it don’t you feel that you could actually have way more things done if you ignored email and Twitter for a couple of hours and only focused on your real work?

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