Or so the saying goes. Having been a gentleman of leisure for the past few months, one would have thought I would have acres of spare time to devote to trivial pursuits such as posting my witty and urbane reflections on this here blog.
I have discovered this not to be the case. There are many reasons why, some I shall touch upon in other posts, but principally, I have come to firmly believe in a something that had previously been only a notion: - The internet is in fact a distraction in itself.
A great deal has been written about the advances in technology, but really they are updated ways of doing things we have done for years. E-mail – telegrams, texting, same thing. Both are different ways of going about the same basic idea of sending a letter.
As for mobile phones, I suppose they are becoming a necessary evil of sorts, but I still like comedian Pete McCarthy’s observation about the problem the infernal devices posed to travelling salesmen trying to remain anonymous, or indeed anyone for that matter.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to disappear from radar these days. If you don’t answer your phone for some time don’t be surprised if someone phones the police or at least frantically calls your nearest and dearest to make sure you haven’t fell foul of some skulduggery.
E-mail is much the same. I recall the internet being a far more interesting place in the early days. I first surfed the ‘information super-highway’ as we once optimistically called it around 1997. You could actually find things you wanted too- like the Zapruder film [before the owners of the rights got wind of it and started selling it]. But again I was at work- not doing my work. I reckon the most prolific bloggers, blog at work. Can anyone remember how we avoided doing work in the old pre-internet days?
Thing about it... those clever fellows out there in cyberspace who invented this highway of dreams, were no doubt skiving off doing their actual work and trying to work out a way to send silly messages to each other without the boss getting wind of it. And thus the ultimate waste of time was born.
