How ubiquitous has the internet become to my life? How fundamentally a part of my day? So much so that I don't even think of it anymore, like the telephone, electric light and reclining sofa, it is a thing that I use so much I almost forget that one can exist without it. I am only reminded of the thrall in which it holds me when for reasons usually mysterious it abandons me to a life offline. In the dim blink of a moment, without warning, I am left directionless, feeling like I have painlessly lost a favorite finger. My need to be online is never so strong as when I cannot get online, even if I had nothing better to look up than an actor on IMDB or an adorable picture of a cat inside a computer case. Being thrust offline shouldn't hit me in quite such a primal way, but when the connection lights on my cable modem begin blinking like Nancy Pelosi on a sunny day, I feel something a bit like panic.

That's probably a bad sign, right?

The first thing I need is answers. If the power is out in the neighborhood and there's a thunderstorm raging just beyond my windows that's one thing, but when my connection stubbornly abandons its post on a bright afternoon, well that's just unforgivable. At this point, I usually threaten the cable modem with colorful language and direct threats of violence. This rarely works. Then, in the same vein as kicking a lawn mower when it won't start or opening and then immediately closing a car hood, I disconnect and reconnect the modem power, certain that the simple act of reminding the machine that I am the arbiter of its sustenance will coerce it to act properly and deliver my 3 Megabit conduit of social connectivity. And, more often than not, this actually does work.

But, on some very occasional dark days it doesn't. Sometimes the internet goes down completely, its endless stream of informative and sustaining bits of data abruptly diverted from their necessary track from source to eyeball. That I actually _need_ very little from the internet at that moment is irrelevant. That I had only sat in my office chair to look up whether Bob Dylan was from Hibbing or Brainerd is reason enough to feel like I must have online access Right Now!

Is this addiction? I've been addicted twice and maybe three times before. I smoked cigarettes for five years, and I remember clearly feeling the absolute necessity of a cigarette the moment I entered any space where smoking was neither permitted nor accessible. I was probably addicted to alcohol for a good stretch of my twenties, though an unexpected alcohol allergy cropped up and cut that thankfully short. Still, evenings without a beer or two at twenty-three felt hollow, like something was simply missing, and I'd go to unusual lengths to sate that desire. I suppose some of my gaming habits are an addiction of a kind, most notably World of Warcraft. Oh, and did you know that World of Warcraft is an Online game?!

Shameful as it is to admit, the moment my cable modem went down one of my first thoughts was how I was going to get into Azeroth if I had a few minutes to spare. But, even putting WoW aside, the sense of need in accessing the internet is, for me, almost manic. At least at first.

Then a strange thing happens. I find that in the rare situations where I am without the internet for days at a time I suddenly begin to remember how to live without online access again, and it's not half bad. I don't have to know instantly whether that guy playing the bartender in one movie is also the guy who played the dying best friend in that other movie, but such useless minutia is simply discarded rather than a good reason to pause and look up the actor's name and filmography. I have to simply rely on what I already know, and if I need to know something further enough then I still have access to more traditional measures like reading a book or asking someone and then taking their word for it. In the realm of useless trivia, the internet is the ultimate hint book, and like hint books for our games once we begin to rely upon it for the hard questions we find that its convenience is a siren song that calls to us on every little point of useless triviality.

Being offline for a few days is strangely liberating, and suddenly that mania in the immediate aftermath of losing the connection feels a bit more like a burden. Eventually we reach critical mass on the number of things we keep track of online, and we feel compelled to maintain our investment in those things. The disconnect from that is at first jarring, but then when we realize that questions like "what would I do without the internet" actually have a meaningful and not terribly difficult answer it is something of a relief.

While I am frantic should I endure a few hours of unplanned interruption in my online connectivity, I find that should those hours become extended for days at a time it's like a vacation. Probably it's not like this for everyone, after all of the two businesses I help operate, both deal in the manipulation and trade of digital bits. Email and the web are not just something I enjoy recreationally, but they are part of my trade, and without it I am unable to carry on business as usual. It takes a little while to realize that a relief from the demands of online life is not necessarily a bad thing.

And then, it is back. Usually as quickly as it was gone, and suddenly I feel reconnected to everything and everyone. The feeling of life being maybe a little easier and maybe a little better without this leash to the world evaporates in a flash. Within minutes life is back to normal, and I am almost browsing to make up time for the browsing I missed, like a man who hadn't had a drink for a week and had just gotten to the point of thinking maybe he didn't need one finding the key to a local liquor store.

Within days, hours, moments, I wonder anew how anyone can exist without high-speed, broadband interconnectivity.