Internet

I remember a time before we were all on Facebook and Twitter and Buzz and the internet was just webpages - I'd regularly check maybe the three or four sites I cared about most, and I'd spend a lot of time....doing other stuff! like making things. or doing homework without checking my email every five minutes.

Okay, there were still some distractions - sometimes I'd do homework while chatting on IM, and I'd occasionally check to see if any friends had a funny new away message, or I'd while away a few hours reading random websites, but the constant stream of updates was less pervasive.

Occasionally I'd find a website I had forgotten about and think, "hey, I missed all this stuff, I wish I could remember to check this site more often." That's exactly the reason I love Google Reader. However, it's become a bit of a burden - I don't want to *miss* anything! That would be terrible! And I keep adding feeds, because, hey, this site's cool, maybe I should follow it too.

...And then all of a sudden I've got 200 unread items, and aahhh! I must clear them out! it turns into something like whack-a-mole. Given some free time, I'll read my unread items instead of, I don't know, doing something productive. it's become a bit of an excuse for procrastination, too: "oh, I'll start that project, but after I read all my webcomics." I'm not even sure how much I remember of what I read.

But it *is* hard to miss anything. I'm certainly more informed now than I was a few years ago, if less attentive. That's because I get all the news from Facebook.

....Okay, maybe things are not so different. Let's compare.

Before and After: A Retrospective.

Before: IM away messages.
After: Twitter updates.

Before: saving sites that updated frequently in a folder in my favorites, obsessive-compulsively checking them to see if they had updated, being disappointed when they didn't, and eventually forgetting about the site if it didn't update often enough.
After: obsessive-compulsively checking Google Reader, and then not knowing what to do with my life after I've read everything ever.

Before: OCD email checking and constant IMing on AOL.
After: OCD email checking and constant IMing on Gmail.

Before: spam about vjjjAgRA and c1Alis.
After: spam about events that I am not going to go to.

Before: coding up my own webpage and comments section.
After: "Wahhh I'm too hosed to do anything awesome and also my old website died in a fire." (no really, it did, and I didn't even have anything to do with it)

Before: power outage = no computer = go play outside or something.
After: laptop = moar internet = don't go play outside or something.

Before: goldfish-like attention span
After: goldfish-like attention span

Before: desire for attention and positive feedback via writing articles for my website that no one ever read. (should have made an RSS feed apparently)
After: desire for attention and positive feedback via writing Twitter/Facebook status updates that occasionally get a "like" or a comment. (yay)

Before: "I wish I knew [foo]."
After: Wikipedia!

Before: OMG LEMMINGS
After: HEY LOOK I CAN DOWNLOAD LEMMINGS I REMEMBER THAT GAME

Before: obsessive-compulsively checking the wording of all my emails.
After: meh, whatever

Before: I was a carefree child with lots of free time.
After: I am a carefree grad student with lots of free time. (what?)