Broadening the band
“What?!” people would cry, almost physically recoiling with shock, “you’re still using dial-up?!”. The thing was, I liked my deliberately crippled little internet. I liked the fact that the web didn’t play music at me or coax me into filling hard-drive after hard-drive with media files. I liked the fact that only the good things worked: the fast, efficient, lean and mean things flew in while the bloated crap stayed away. But most of all, I liked the fact that the internet was something that went on somewhere else: I wasn’t surfing so much as spectating, and I could pull the plug as I wished.
I think the real problem was that I liked the thinternet too much, and I spent more and more time using it. But, with the passing of time, it “improved” (as in: got more and more bloated until became unusable). So, I wasn’t simply spending time doing more things, I was spending more time doing things. I can’t remember exactly what it was that provoked it but, one morning in late spring, I snapped. I needed bandwidth, and fast.