Offline Life.

The title of this post refers to some­thing that is kinda ali­en to me. Yet, it shouldn’t be. For the last 20 years or so, my life has been online, in one form or anoth­er. Yes, I’m a digit­al nomad, liv­ing in a digit­al world, con­fused by those who insist on stay­ing offline.

As more people are embra­cing mobile tech or simply get­ting their kids to hook them up with web access (hi Mom!), it’s becom­ing more rare to encounter someone who doesn’t live part of their life online.

I’m a bad example, per­haps a bit extreme toward the online end, but for me, I get a major­ity of my TV, radio, music, movies and gam­ing through the Inter­net. I call up road maps, check daily weath­er, pay my bills, pay my taxes, sched­ule hair­cuts, order new books and hard­ware through it. Yes, I’m part of the web.  So much so that when it’s miss­ing, it’s noticeable.

Yet, there is a sig­ni­fic­ant por­tion of human­ity that man­ages to get by without a daily/hourly con­nec­tion to the Mat­rix. And, for the life of me, I can’t fathom how this is possible!

I’m aware that some folk are not into the online life­style, but frankly I don’t get it. II don’t under­stand why people are insist­ing on pay­ing their bills in per­son at the bank. Nor do I under­stand why folk are still tied to land­line tele­phone con­tracts, when VOIP phone sys­tems and cel­lu­lar tech­no­logy allow much great­er freedom.

To be clear, I’m not a GenX GenY or Mil­leni­um. I was born in the six­ties, learned stuff in the sev­en­ties, and frankly try to for­get the eighties. Yet, I’m com­fort­able with this tech. It’s so freakin’ enabling I can’t see why more aren’t using it to enable them to do awe­some things!

I just received an invite to go pho­to­graph an occur­rence of the Aurora Boreal­is via Twit­ter. My work, yes my employ­ment, is online. Earli­er this even­ing I checked in with my Mom to make sure her new computer’s work­ing fine, and took con­trol of her sys­tem to veri­fy it was work­ing fine. Cur­rently, I’m listen­ing to a favour­ite celt­ic sing­er through an online music service.

How can this not make sense? What am I miss­ing? Enlight­en me 

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.