Say Goodbye to iPhone

It’s a lovely little gadget, but I had to get rid of it. All those colorful buttons and multi-tasking … I felt like a child playing office with Fisher Price. Here’s the problem with iPhones, gorgeous enablers of connectivity and awareness: they foster a short attention span and never-on-vacation attitude more than any piece of technology that exists (its neighbors on the podium are the Blackberry and the Trio). I knew this would be the case when I bought it (at a steep discount, mind you). But I cringed reading the 4-Hour Work Week blog, realizing how far away I was from “working” only four hours a week (like many bestsellers, the title of this concept is hyperbolic; by “working” I think he means “tearing one’s hair out”). Just that day, I had configured my Mail application (another, browser-free Apple delicacy) to give me RSS feeds from publications ranging from the New York Times to uh…the New Yorker. I have such range.

But as time wore on, I noticed that I was rarely looking at those RSS feeds. Is it because the concept of having RSS Feeds in your e-mail is disconcerting? Absolutely. Getting 100 e-mails a day is hassle enough already; I don’t need 100 more things that look like e-mails but really contain mere links to other pieces of information­—in your browser—to cultural goings-on. No thanks. But do I use any other RSS feeds, besides as a means of bookmarking my favorite bloggers (ahem, writers)? Nope.

Meanwhile, I was still vainly checking my mail on my iPhone in the morning while the N train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge. The point? After all, the AT&T network is now so slow that if you’re not on wireless, it can take up to 10 minutes for 10 e-mail messages to load completely. No thanks. And anyway, what advantage was it to get those e-mails before I got to work? Whatever it was, it was short-lived.

I’m currently using a Microsoft Word trial to compose a blog entry to Netcetera. I need no Internet connection; it hovers silently in the background so Word can post my document to the Web automatically. I’m on vacation and would prefer to stay away from the medium I work on, in, and around 45-50 hours a week, partly so that I can recharge my admiration for its mixed bag of opportunity, education, and distraction. I’ve just retired from the business of music criticism, at least temporarily, and will be working on short fiction for the next eight days. I nearly gave up creative writing after three years of full-time writing jobs, and I wonder if technology, a spaghetti-splatter of information that alternately sticks to and falls from my face, is to blame. I’m using my dad’s Bose headphones to block out sounds and listen to old, old music. I’m reading “Eat, Pray, Love,” because I was sure I would hate it. But sometimes a big ball of cheese is the best medicine. The book is the #3 bestseller on Amazon and has been for weeks, months. On the subway you will see at least one young woman a day reading it, and guess what, it’s not an Oprah Book Club selection–yet. So why am I reading it? I, who never do what the masses do, except if they were to roll their eyes at another mass? I’m stepping outside of myself for awhile. I’m trying to be open-minded. The book is about abandoning everything one thinks one wants—a successful writing career, a house on Long Island, an apartment in New York, and a family (hey, it’s not exactly my dream, but it was Elizabeth Gilbert’s)—and traveling to three countries that coincidentally start with ‘I’—Italy, India, and Indonesia, in search of spirituality, love, good food, and oneself. It’s like a vacation within a vacation. I like it so far (thanks, Kate, for the recommendation).

What we do at Dulcinea Media is exalt the Web. We primp, prune, inspect, dissect, powder, pluck, groom and tie a bow around the Web. What is required for that job is an almost spiritual methodology: enter the Web with a calm, open-minded attitude. Respect it, but narrow your eyes at it, especially if you smell a whiff of somebody (or simply, an IP address) up on a soapbox. But most of all, approach the Web the way you would a classic novel by, say, George Eliot, who could pack as much information about the world and English society into an 800-page novel as the Internet can in a couple of pages of search engine results. In other words, it can be as classic, as classy, and as educational as a book, a PBS special, or a symphony. But it can also be as addictive as caffeine, as dizzying as a trip to Costco, and as mind-numbing as an episode of an MTV reality show. Taking a vacation from the 21st century, thus far defined by the Internet, not only relieves stress—something even a 24-year-old can face, by the way. It also reminds us of the fruits of the labor of generations past, and how we must put their accomplishments on the Web, keep them there, and do everything in our power to emulate them.

One thing they do: they read the entire New Yorker from cover to cover. In this era of choice, can you even imagine doing such a thing? Well, try it. And then try doing the same thing on its Web site. Does anyone savor the Web? As if it were a 1891 first edition of a Henry James novel? As if it might vanish or disintegrate tomorrow? What happens when your Internet connection fails? Get back to me when that happens.

So as I sit here at my parents’ droid of a PC, I think, well, I’m not blogging! I’m writing a letter to my coworkers and other scattered fans of the Netcetera Blog. Semantics is a form of therapy. I highly recommend it.