Three weeks without Internet.

I consider myself the biggest internet addict I know. I work, consume information, prepare for school, communicate with friends and family, run my everyday errands like banking, shopping, vacation planning and etc. via Internet. And now due to some changes I had to manage without it.

What a shock.

I thought it will be liberating, but was it really? What did I learn? Work – absolutely not possible to manage. Luckily I had a vacation and no harm done, if not to consider some personal projects.

Information came mainly via TV and not in the amount and shape I’m used to. I am used to create my own information flow in the internet, so I consume only the information I’m truly interested in. So not completely satisfied with the local news, as it’s not tailored according to my needs. Although if there would be a hurricane, earth quake or some other major disaster I should know of, I would know and I would not die.

I was totally cut out from social communication as I manage it via msn, Facebook and e-mails, as I’m from the new era of communication and instead of meeting my friends, I tend to communicate electronically. I’m not used to pick up the phone and ask “Hey, what’s up, how you’re doing?”, what’s worse, actually get dressed and visit someone instead of calling. I do it from time to time, but not on the regular basis. So now I get sms-s and calls inquiring “are I still alive?”. As for the known quote: if you’re not online, you do not exist.

There is also one institution who thought there is something wrong. My home bank, because my regular payments were not on time. I dragged myself to the bank office and made my payments manually via payment machine, which was a first time experience for me. Pleasant luckily. It was very easy to handle.

As for the vacation planning, it was a total failure. How do you book something if you do not know how it looks and what is said about it in the forums. How do I know if the price-range is reasonable or is there a room for negotiations? I can handle some background checking via phone in Estonia, but if my interests are behind the national border? How do people without internet travel at all? I do not understand. They look at some packaged offer from the newspaper ad and read from the encyclopedia what the main attractions are? What if I’m into fine dining or extreme tourism? I should then totally rely on the travel agency and that robbes away my independence. Or I can just hit the road and see what tomorrow brings… which is a nice option, but not always. Especially if you plan to travel with kids.

Anyways living without internet in the longer run is expensive. Your choice is limited and the effort made, to consume, bigger. Also the phone bill.

There are still many families who run their everyday lives without internet. My dad for example. I still wonder how he manages all his errands so well. Although I have to admit, the life tempo is from another dimension and comparable to geese migration speed. As a marketer it triggers, how to reach those households, without internet. There in an answer. About it in my next post.