In the Lap of Love

In the lap of love

Do you find that you stay on your laptop longer than you intended? Do you lose sleep due to being online late at night? How often are you and your partner/friend on different computers in the same room, supposedly hanging out together? Do you “check-in” wherever you go, even if you are just going to Costco?

A couple of these questions are on the Are You Addicted to the Internet? Quiz. I won’t bother you with my answers. I already knew I had a problem when I realized that I cared more about my computer than my roommate’s cat (who was hovering way too close to my laptop for comfort). There is no app for that Scratch that, there IS an app for that and it is called Ybrowse. It has 0 reviews so far, so out of all the things people search for online, solving an internet addiction isn’t one of them.

Maybe you don’t want to go online to seek treatment for going online? Now there is a clinic available to treat internet addiction.

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”

In an age where technologies designed to connect us are constantly emerging, is the core of our humanity at stake? In the short film “I Forgot My Phone” Charlene De Guzman answers this question with a resounding “yes!”

Asha’s favorite example of this technology disconnect is when people feel the need to capture the moment at concerts by recording it on their phones. Isn’t the point of going to these concerts to soak in an experience that you can’t get through a recording?

My favorite disconnect is the act of following friends through different online applications. When one of my friends told me that she was following me on Spotify, I reacted as if a stranger came up behind me and whispered “I’m following you” in my ear. I would not hesitate to talk to her about music I like, but does she need to know that I’m listening to Meatloaf while I clean my home? Maybe it would be a funny thing that brought us closer together. But sometimes (usually) my life is not an open house party, and I don’t know when I invited all these people in.