Great point, as we actually have an upcoming vblog from The Wisdom of the Big Chair about smartphone addiction.
Speaking personally, I wouldn't want to be without my iPhone now that I've gotten used to having it by my side for the past eight months. However, I spent Friday-Tuesday out of the country and kept my iPhone off to avoid roaming charges, and guess what? I survived! And I actually enjoyed having it off. So I think we can live without these things... for now... but it's going to get more difficult as we turn our smartphones into our wallets, remote controls, car keys, whatever else.
Slight digression. How would people cope without their smartphones? Once upon a time we managed to conduct our lives without them. Is that unthinkable now?
Re: "The other aspect is that getting caught up with everything after being away can take a long time."
That's always the concern I have when taking time away from the Web... and then when I do return after a few days or however long I discover that all I missed was a whole lot of nothing.
I dont know if withdrawl is the correct term here (for me atleast) but i guess in this age where internet is everywhere not being logged on to FB,Twitter or other social networking site is becoming a rarity. If I am not logged on to my Twitter account for days it doesnt effect me much but I do tend to get inquisitive about what others are posting out there.Staying in touch was never this addictive.
And obviously if I need to be away from the Internet, I can. But it's such an important part of my life, the ability to Google any random question or thought that comes to mind (my boyfriend and I keep a pad of paper on road trips to note down the "what was that monument for?" types of questions). The other aspect is that getting caught up with everything after being away can take a long time.
KMT568, I also think it's a generational difference. Our generation is used to always having electricity and hot water and so on, and we would feel deprived if forced to live without all these things. The younger generation is used to always having Internet connection, that's just a regular part of their lives.
I'm guessing at a month. I just spent a 2 week vacation without internet and didn't miss it at all. But I would probably miss googling opportunities and weather forecasts and news reports in normal life.
For people like those kind of addicts we have "Internet Withdrawal clinics" which are extremely popular in South.Korea[The most wired country on the planet].
Its a really sad development for human civilization but that's the way things are...
I agree with you. I see it as normal curve whereby once the initial excitement is over you become stable and in control except in the case of addicts. Then again there are those who cannot rest when there is no internet even though they hardly use it when its back.
Ashish,
I agree with that but there are those people who cannot manage the willpower to put their mind to it, and this is what sets them apart as addicts or the other in betweens as the case may be.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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