It has been a full week now since we had a viable internet connection. Most of the time there has been no service and for the brief periods that a connection has re-appeared the signal has been weak. Hence I am typing this post as rapidly as I can and there is no accompanying photograph.
This has been highly inconvenient and shows how dependent we have become on the benefits of the internet for day to day functioning. Much of the administrative aspects of life are now conducted online and this situation is difficult to circumvent at short notice when the internet service suddenly disappears. The problem is with the line. That is the copper BT line - no cable around here. I gather Open Reach were carrying out a repair nearby and in the process damaged some wires. They are still working on rectifying it and have had to close the road a few times as a result.
Most will be very aware of the negative aspects on the internet and the digitalised world we now live in. But overall the benefits have been enormous. Two important benefits as far as I am concerned are the resulting democratisation of knowledge and the decentralisation of expertise. Of course both need some judicious consideration because there are drawbacks to both of these developments too. But, to give one small example, in my smallholding life there have been countless occasions when I have drawn on YouTube to find out how to deal with a problem or to go about a task.
Of course the world is always changing but it is probably fair to say that the digital revolution has made change much more rapid than in the past. Here's a couple of changes that spring to mind.
When I was an undergraduate at Nottingham University there was not a computer to be seen, except maybe in a science laboratory. Essays were hand written. But one of the biggest differences from today is that if you wanted to read a reference from an academic journal you had to seek it out in large bound books on the library shelves. If you wanted your own copy it meant queuing for the photocopier and having a enough supply of coins to feed the machine. The most outrageously selfish thing I came across was an article that had been torn out of the bound volume.
In the late 1980s, early in my mental health career, I worked for Barking and Dagenham Social Service Department as a Senior Specialist Practitioner in mental health. This was in the days when services were generic and area based rather focused on specific client groups. If we wrote an internal memo a hand written fair copy was taken to the typing pool and a day or two later a typed copy was returned which could then be put in to the internal post for circulation. The same process applied to external letters. These had to be written in the name of the Director of Social Services which resulted in a rather cumbersome third person style. A world away from emails and the velocity of communication we contend with nowadays.
The local authority was quaintly old fashioned. The staff restaurant was waitress service with waitresses wearing black dresses and white linen pinafores and matching lace headpiece. These were the days when it was possible to factor in a lunch break before professional life accelerated to the point that for me lunch breaks were squeezed out. This, too, can trace its origins to digitalisation.
A smallholding life is thankfully much slower. But I notice that even those who share their experiences of living off-grid seem to find it necessary to accommodate connectivity with the world wide web. I also wonder how things will be in the future when the cost of energy becomes permanently high (notwithstanding the current energy cost crisis) and even in advanced economies there will be an increasing need for frugality. Will digitalisation become even more or less important?
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