26 May 2024
I find the way in which the human brain stores memories fascinating. It is very different to how computers store information for instance, a huge pile of data with no underlying structure really. It is thus unsurprising perhaps that occasionally bits from one memory substitute for those in another - I have spoken to people, for instance, who can vividly remember taking their dog out to places which they went to long before they ever had one. Our brains evidently fill in the memory, or at least give it an update.
I feel the same way about the Internet. I am old enough to remember dial-up, I remember the excitement the day we got our first ADSL line, and then when fibre came along a few years ago. In short, I have lived through every single one of the iterations of the home internet. But somehow, my brain has started to superimpose today’s fibre speeds onto the time of ADSL and Dial-Up. I know for a fact that pages didn’t just load - in fact, that was always half the fun of it, the mystery of whether it would or if a timeout would be reached. But memories are a strange thing.
One thing I do remember vividly though is that, despite its faults, that internet was always enough. I can’t recall ever thinking to myself ‘gosh, I wish this would move a tad faster’, the (relative to today) speeds of that internet seemed cutting edge back then. “Faster Internet Is Impossible”, an article published in Low Tech Magazine gives a working hypothesis which could be condensed as thus: As data distribution technology (the “hardware” layer of the internet) gets better, we are given a choice - we can use it to make the internet load faster, or we can use it to shove through yet more bits.
The article raises an interesting point: statistically, the data throughput of the internet doubled each year, but the number of new users was not anywhere near enough to account for this change (in 2008 when the article was written at least, this will probably not be the case now). One conclusion that could be drawn from this was that the extra bandwidth of newer internet technologies was being used for higher data throughput applications, such as streaming video.
To give a perhaps more real-world example, consider the latest iPhone 15 and compare it to the Nokia 3310. Testing by GSMArena suggests the longest amount of time the iPhone battery will last for is 98 hours, which is a lot better than a few years ago, but the 3310 achieves 260 hours. In the years since 2000, when the 3310 was designed, battery technology has only become better and better - in fact the iPhone contains a 3349 mAh battery, as compared to only a 900 mAh battery in the 3310. A battery more than 3x as big, yet seemingly almost 60% worse performing? What gives?
What gives is human behavior - our unfortunate desire for greed and maximisation means that all that extra battery capacity gets taken up with unnecessary features. No one used to complain about the Nokia 3310 - it did everything you could possibly need. No one was saying at the time “No, I’d never buy one of them, it doesn’t have internet access or a camera! Useless crud, honestly”. Those features only became important because of the social pressure to have them. And, having lived without any mobile phone for the past 4 months, life is no worse without them.
I feel that we illusion ourselves into feeling that we need these things in life. We can’t remember what life was like without cameraphones or constant access to 5G, perhaps because our brains have just quietly penciled in these things into our memories. Frankly though, if you do choose to try living without them for just a few weeks, the hole they leave in your life is almost unnoticeable. Advertising campaigns more often than not try to play on the emotion of feeling left out, and like a product will make your life more complete, but remember, humans have been living for tens of thousands of years without any of it.
Apologies for the long introduction - the internet then. Having effectively eradicated the influence of the smartphone from my life, my attention turned thence to the internet. Some of my old habits have moved to the laptop now that I can’t use the phone in the house, though at least I can only enact them when I am at home, as I simply don’t have an internet connection outside any more.
I had a striking thought the other day though, which was in vast part what sparked this entire initiative: Internet access never used to be constant. When dial-up was the technology, you had to use the phone line, meaning that the landline would be out of action until you had finished browsing. Thus, browsing was a significantly more considered activity, something that was done with a lot more thought than just opening an application and typing in a search term.
It also cost a lot, and by the minute in some cases, meaning that browsing may even be a more considered activity, as one may choose to write down search terms before going online in order to make the best use of one’s time. The majority of the time though, a computer would default to being offline.
I felt that perhaps I could draw some inspiration from this experience in order to solve my excessive browsing problems. And so, much like the first day that I put my phone in a drawer and forgot about it, I decided to slow down my internet.
Doing so is not exactly difficult - the simple rule is that the weakest link in the chain is the speed of the chain, so by introducing some sort of speed limiter between my laptop and the router, things should work as expected. I chose to use an old laptop which was connected to the router too, and host a WiFi network from there, onto which I would then connect all my other devices (I live in a communal building with shared and managed routers for anyone wondering why I don’t just decrease the bandwidth there). It seems to work, as I can now achieve a reliable 1Mbps connection.
I decided to go even further than this though, by hard-limiting the amount of time I am able to spend online. This is a rather simple task really - as it is just a case of turning off the hotspot using a script. It turns on at 08:00 and off at 20:00, and I am hoping to get that down a bit to only a few hours per day.
You don’t realise quite how reliant you are on the internet until you turn it off. I got quite used to seeing screens saying “Check your internet connection” in pieces of software which had no right using it, just connecting to servers for (presumably) data logging purposes, getting news feeds etc. Most software seems to pretty much expect a constant internet connection these days, and I feared that this fact might prevent my moving away from having one. Having said that, most of the software I used regularly appeared relatively unscathed by its cruel divorce from the Worldwide Web.
I have, since, invented new ways in which to combat the lack of internet, indeed by making more efficient use of the time I do have it. I am not yet at the point of writing down search terms before going online, but presumably when I begin to further ration my time, I will come up with something similar to that. Below, though are detailed in 100 words or less each, some of the solutions I have come up with to be more efficient with my internet use.
RSS is not a dying technology as many people seem to thing it is, most sites still have a feed which can be subscribed to. Not only does using an RSS reader keep me offline (and from constantly browsing, perhaps getting drawn in to reading other articles) but when my RSS reader refreshes in the background, it automatically downloads the article as a text file for me to read later, regardless of whether I am on or offline.
Of course, in order to add a site into your RSS feed, you have to find it first. Some browsing is thus still necessary, and in a similar vein, I quite often download websites by simply pressing Cmd+S in the browser. If I find an article which I want to read later, I add it to my downloads folder, and when I am offline, I can still view and read the article in Firefox.
Downloading a video is harder, firstly it takes more bandwidth, and certain sites don’t like you doing it. As a result, I have started getting used to lower resolution video, which I have no problem with. I don’t feel that whether or not I can see every last pixel really affects the viewing experience particularly, and it makes my brain more active filling in the rest.
The radio is perhaps the best offline form of entertainment (short of a television which I do not possess). It is a cheap, free-to-access service with a great breadth of options. I particularly enjoy Radio 4, and find it exceptionally educational, but also entertaining. There’s Radio 1 for when I feel in a slightly more bouncy mood, and Radio 3 for whenever I want to make guests think I’m intelligent.
Of course, the best use of offline time I have found is not trying to emulate the online world, but embracing the reality of not having the internet. I have read far more since turning off the internet, and I am starting to build up a library of books which never run out of battery or signal. I even have a Chamber’s Dictionary and a Roget’s Thesaurus, and purely just the act of thumbing through them trying to find interesting words can provide a good hour’s worth of entertainment. And of course I have “proper” books too, I am nearing the end of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a small island at the minute, and already have the next in the series ready to go.
Life without the internet being constantly there is far from impossible, and indeed very enjoyable. Our own presumptions and fading memories seem to preclude us from doing things which we perceive as making our lives worse, but the courage to at least try them is what can lead to change. I am not saying everyone should stop using their phones, or slowing down their internet, or even turning it off entirely - this is a wider point. Stop doing things just because you did them yesterday, stop carrying the phone about because you always take it with you, don’t Google something just because you can - be more considered in your approach to life.
Tagged as: thoughts technology low-tech web