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Life Connected with Computer{{/B}} After too long on the Net, even a phone call can be a shock. My boyfriend's Liverpudlian accent suddenly becomes indecipherable after the clarity of his words on screen, a secretary's tone seems more rejecting than I'd imagined it would be. Time itself becomes fluid—hours become minutes, and alternately seconds stretch into days. Weekends, once a highlight of my week, are now just two ordinary days. For the last three years, since I stopped working as a producer for Charlie Rose, I have done much of my work as a telecommuter. I submit articles and edit them via E-mail and communicate with colleagues on Internet mailing lists. My boyfriend lives in England, so much of our relationship is computer-mediated. If I desired, I could stay inside for weeks without wanting anything. I can order food, and manage my money, love and work. In fact, at times I have spent as long as three weeks alone at home, going out only to get mail and buy newspapers and groceries. I watched most of the blizzard of '96 on TV. But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal. I start to feel as though I've merged with my machines, taking data in, spitting them back out, just another node on the Net. Others on line report the same symptoms. We start to strongly dislike the outside forms of socializing. It's like attending an A. A. meeting in a bar with everyone holding a half-sipped drink. We have become the Net Opponents' worst nightmare. What first seemed like a luxury, crawling from bed to computer, not worrying about hair, and clothes and face, has become an avoidance, a lack of discipline. And once you start replacing real human contact with cyber-interaction, coming back out of the cave can be quite difficult. At times, I turn on the television and just leave it to chatter in the background, something that I'd never done previously. The voices of the programs soothe me, but then I'm jarred by the commercials. I find myself sucked in by soap operas, or compulsively needing to keep up with the latest news and the weather. "Dateline, " "Frontline, " "Nightline, "CNN, NewYork 1, every possible angle of every story over and over, even when they are of no possible use to me. Work moves from foreground to background. |