Last week I purchased a MacBook that’s roughly 20 trillion times faster than my ancient iBook, whose microchips finally (subtle shout-out to Apple’s toughness) gave up the ghost after six years of daily use and lots of international travel.
Yes, I resisted the urge to upgrade, in part because all of my frugal, Depression-era, use-it-till-it’s-gone-or-dead relatives rubbed off on me. Now that I’ve got a computer with Speedy-Gonzales velocity, it takes some getting used to.
For example, I recently discovered just how instant the “Watch Instantly” tab is on Netflix’s site. A word to the technologically uninitiated and those with brontosaurus laptops: It really means instant. Right now. Shot from cyberspace to your eyeballs in one second.
Lately I find myself fighting the temptation to watch a Netflix movie or TV episode every spare moment. (And don’t even get me started on that entertainment temptress, Hulu.) This weekend—my first with the MacBook—I made dinner for friends with the laptop on the kitchen counter, which happily chirped away with some random show before guests arrived. I also killed six hours just surfing the net and watching programs I don’t normally watch. What gave way to these onscreen delights? Housework. A phone call or two. Exercise. Reading.
Must. Put. Shiny toy. Down. Sunlight would probably set my eyes ablaze at this point. This “amusement cave” is not a world I want to (or can) continue to live in!
Previously I cooked and puttered around the house sans chattering background noise—and it gave me time to think. But I wonder how many people who already swim in the streaming infotainment river even think about it anymore. If I kept swimming here, would I gradually forget life before I had an entire video catalog at my fingertips?
And soon—maybe next week, considering the speed of things—my present MacBook will also be considered a dinosaur, and I will, once again, be deliberately behind the digital times. Only six years from now my next upgrade will probably involve interactive holographic images.
Eek.
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