Oh the internet

 MY INTERNET WAS OUT ALL LAST WEEK- what a pain

I was in New Orleans last week, awaiting a phone call about being an extra in a film. While I was waiting, the Internet where I was, decided it just didn't want to work and go down for the day. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Then, one day without Internet, turned into a entire week without Internet. Not fun.

While I was waiting for the Internet, and mainly the guys fixing it to work, I was hit by the thought of just how much we as a society rely on technology. The days of talking face to face have, to a degree, been replaced with computer screens, skype, FaceTime, and then some. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I do enjoy actual face to face time.

My senior year of college, I was ready to tackle the theater and dance department by storm. Little did I know just how ironic my thought process would be. My first week as a senior in college was followed by a pretty horrific storm. The storm being an actual Hurricane. You may of heard of it, it was a hurricane by the name of "Katrina". Yep...

The University of Southern Mississippi, where I attended, is only about an hour and a half away from New Orleans. While I had been in school, we had our fare share of hurricane warnings. Almost every time we would have a scare, the school would shut down for a few days, with nothing happening, other then the sky looking dark and maybe some heavy rain. That's it. So, students always looked forward to hurricane scares because that meant an automatic two day vacation during the week.

The news did it's usual thing, warning all to be safe and prepared. Which of course, everyone shrugged off, until the day before Katrina actually hit. That's when we heard that this wasn't our usual gray sky, rainy day hurricane. It was a category 5. The BIG one.

Madness soon took over Hattiesburg (the town the school is in). Getting out of town looked impossible. Plus, the car I was driving at the time didn't really have any juice. So, I ended up staying with my dance professor, her friend, and at least 12 cats in a nice little/big bungalow in Hattiesburg.

Katrina hit, and she hit hard. The next few days were memorable ones. Everything was down. Phone lines, computers, television, anything dealing with technology was out. Any communication to anyone didn't exist, and there was no way to know when it would.

That's when it dawned on all of us, just how much we rely on technology. We were able to find an old radio that worked, and lucky we found one station that was functioning and giving updates just about every hour on the hour. After that, a different world opened up.

Different neighbors from around began coming out and helping one another. My professor had been living where she was for years and was just now meeting her neighbors, and the same on their end. Together, we all moved broken branches and trash from the streets. We were finding out more about the storm others had learned. We became a community of communication. Helping one another automatically became human nature. There was no Facebook stalking to learn about one another, we just talked to one another face to face.

Without YouTube videos and movies to entertain us, there was conversation and reading. Yes reading. My professor luckily had a plethora of books. So entertainment was found. Because in a book, there are no lights, no music, no actors, just you and your imagination painting this picture in your head.

Since we couldn't get on the Internet to learn how to do specific things, we had to ask and talk to one another to figure things out. Again, people were willing and offering their knowledge and skills to help in any way. After about two weeks, things got back to a working order and school was back in
session.

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I love it for the unbelievable amount of information it possess and its helpfulness, though I do hate it for the wedge it does put between actually meeting another individual face to face. It's not the easiest thing to do, but it is possible. 

Since that crazy Katrina summer, I haven't had another experience come along quite like that one. By that I mean, I haven't had another experience come along where folks around me are as personable and are just willing to go out of their way to meet you and want to build a sort of community with one another. Lets hope that it won't take another storm to hit in order to make that happen.

That's my spill about my experience without technology. I guess that leaves me with a question. Have you ever had a long extended period of time without the Internet or a cell phone? If not, think you can manage a few days without?

Nicole