I'm having a big ol' wave of unfounded nostalgia for Going On The Computer this week. Who remembers going on the computer? It was how you got on the internet. The internet was in one place, and that one place was a massive tower and CRT monitor, and if you weren't sat there with that tower and monitor (or maybe a big heckin' chonker of a laptop, one with a DVD drive in it) then you were not on the computer and therefore you were not on the internet.
I often ask myself what, exactly, I was doing with my life in those days. I think the answer most of the time was probably that I was going on the computer. But also: it wasn't always going on the computer. We just lived this different existence, arranging to meet people by phone calls and texts or running into them in town. Receiving take-out menus through the door at a rate of three or four a week and putting them in The Take-Out Menu Drawer in the piece of hallway furniture with drawers. I read a lot more books. I owned a lot more books. I would sit in my chair, in the bay window, and listen to my vinyl and read books. I'd go out and buy vinyl, and I didn't do it because vinyl was cool, because it wasn't yet cool. What it was was very cheap. We'd go over to see friends and watch the same DVDs, or maybe rent something from Blockbuster. Play couch co-op video games. We'd go to the pub. Do jigsaws. I dunno. I can't explain how I spent my spare time now. Maybe I was on the internet as much as I am now, but not at the same time as I was in the kitchen.
It kind of makes me want to put my phone down, store away my tablet, maybe live a different life. I dunno. If I was going on the computer instead of using an app, I'd be more in control of things. I'd be blocking all those annoying adverts.
But I don't, and I think I probably don't for the same reason that such times passed into myth and memory: it was really fucking boring. I think it probably wasn't good. But the life I have now is not good in a different way, one that in fairness is badly exacerbated because I can't walk far enough to leave the house now. I dunno. It all feels so ruthlessly designed for me to consume, on my own, for as much time as they can grab my attention. Nothing forces us to hang out with friends and share a movie or a game now. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe I should spend ten minutes a day being deliberately bored.
