I crack my knuckles one at a time, crack, click, snap. I bite my lip, hard, then continue glaring at my computer screen.
The same bold red capitals flash onto my screen. Your username or password are incorrect, please try again.
I glare. I re-type. I slap enter. Bold red capitals. I hiss in nail biting frustration. I repeat. Again. ****
The internet. As important to our lives as our lungs, our phones and computers have become extensions of our arms, our fingers.
The internet. It has become a prism through which we view the world, how we feel, taste, smell.
The internet. It is that third wheel on our first dates, an inadmissible ingredient for our relationships. Without it, many of our friendships could never have even existed.
For me, the internet is how I talk to my Mum when I am alone in foreign cities where no-one speaks English, it is my link to the outside world, my banking, Al Jazeera news, you-tube music, emails, Facebook, Skype.
It is a slippery ledge that I cling desperately to, all that saves me, at times, from falling into that abyss of lone-weariness and isolation.
The pass week, my first in New Delhi, I have had no internet connection at home.
****
I am in a city of close to 18,000,000, a city of humming humanity, of car honking, rubbish spilling,
cow pooing, activity.
A city where the people march like a parade of black ants, in and out of Metro stations, to offices, buying and selling at markets, standing and eating beside wheeling street-food stalls. They throw their plastic plates into the gutters, march on, into buses, trains, toxic belching tuk-tuks and darting, horn blaring motor-bikes.
The black lines of ants swirl around, parting and bumping against me. I feel very alone.
****
Since when did I become so attached to technology, to the internet? How has, having a WiFi connection everywhere I go, become the key to my happiness?
It has become an insidious compulsion, a lusting throb in my pointer finger that can only be
relieved by gently pressing the on-button to my computer and caressing the rough edges of my mouse wheel, scrolling down my news feed and clicking through my emails.
****
The happiness experiment: Facebook manipulates the news feeds of users; some people are shown negative posts and articles, while others are shown positive. This revealed that those exposed to the happier feed posts, in turn, were more likely to click on advertisements. This in turn would mean more revenue for Facebook.
In another experiment, FB altered its settings to allow user's an organ donor status to become public with a link to their closes donor registry. In the first day of the initiative alone, donor registrations sky-rocketed by 13,000.
*****
The thought hits me in a crashing wave of technological cynicism. Does the internet really define- have such a meaningful and potentially dangerous influence over- that gray and invisible area of structural human identity? That un-tongue-tameable notion of swirling ideas, the part of us that makes us us. The part that we can't live without. Be us without. The thought worries me. Something to ponder.
*****
I hunch into my computer screen, elbows digging into the table on either side of my keyboard. My knuckles push into my cheeks, bunching the skin around my computer-tired eyes. The icy purr of the Starbucks air-conditioner fills my ears, muting the clitter-clatter of coffee drinkers at neighbouring tables, it skates down the nape of my damp neckline, freezing slick sweat against my back-sticking t-shirt.
And it kicks and splutters. The signal's light, it's flickering heart beat, bursts into life. I gasp a lungful of electric air.
Facebook. Hotmail emails. Google. Type; how to live without the internet.
Jed Anderson-Habel