After the Signal Dies

I’m an addict. Not the dramatic kind—drugs, alcohol, cigarettes are all behind me, none of them really took. My actual addiction is the internet, and it’s worse than any of those because it’s legal, socially encouraged, and professionally necessary. The sheer volume of inspiration and information I pull from this thing has made me more dependent than every joint, one-night stand, and World of Warcraft session combined. I fall asleep with my laptop in my arms. I wake up reaching for it. It delivers something I can only describe as deep interior satisfaction—because it’s genuinely interesting, lets me reach into other people’s thinking, and occasionally pays the rent.

But we all know the signal can’t hold forever. When the world finally comes apart—some geopolitical catastrophe, a great server fire, the last webpage loading and then nothing—it’ll be over for Google, for social media, for all of it. The nerds will have to reacquaint themselves with direct sunlight. Hipsters will crack nuts with their iPhones. Bloggers will climb the nearest hill and shout their ego-driven thoughts at the open sky, which is honestly not that different from what they’re doing now.

I’ll adapt. I get bored unusually fast, and the internet has only stretched that process out because it keeps mutating into something new before I can lose interest in the current version. Sooner or later even that mechanism gives out.

So when the great collapse finally arrives, I’ll retreat to some island somewhere—high altitude, sea view, decent coconut supply—and flip through my printed archive with a cocktail in hand, quietly amused at how desperately important we all thought this networked world was. A once-rebellious medium, fading to a warm and slightly embarrassing memory. It was something while it lasted.