the corner office

I remember, way back in '96, on a local mailing list, someone sending out a "you know you're addicted to the Internet when..." joke - the usual fluff about portaloos and upset spouses and faceless friends. The one "addiction sign" which really made an impression was this one:

You check your mail. No new messages. So you check again.

I remember that line every time I hit the 'fetch' button in my mail client. In light of that, this BBC article (via Steve Castledine) about a man who's kicked the broadband habit and returned to 56k dial-up, and reclaimed his life in doing so. It rings far too true for me.

A month or two back I commented to Ronwen on how we're just constantly ingesting information, constantly looking for more stuff to give a shit about. Why do we do that? I remembered my late grandfather, in particular, who'd sit down religiously every evening to watch the 8 o'clock news, take in what was happening in the world around him, and then move on and not worry about it for another 24 hours. I can only imagine what he'd think of the idea of multiple 24 hour news channels, email, instant messaging, constantly-updated news sites, RSS aggregators and the like. I'm sure the first thing he'd ask is "how do you get anything done?"