I don't know how I feel about this, oddly enough. When I first got here, it was hard to be without an instant answer to any trivial question I might have, hard to be away from instant contact with friends, family, acquaintances.
When I heard the news tonight this thought popped into my head - one of the only things that makes the isolation here bearable is...the isolation. I don't have the entire world taunting me with its existence all day long. We are just here and that's how it is and we deal with it. Don't know the answer? Make a decision anyway. Want to do more research? Can't. Just do it.
Is more information going to put more drugs on the shelves? Is more communication going to speed up the bridge repairs? Is more access to the world going to organize the stock room?
And then more questions for after work. Will the town be bigger if I can see what everyone is doing today on Facebook? As much time as we spend together as a team, nothing else for us to do after it gets dark at 6pm other than talk to each other, have a nice long dinner, curse at the ever begging cats, or talk about how the little chicks have gotten all adolescent ugly, wonder where the eggs get laid, watch the bats wake up, listen to the tam tams and the children singing outside the yard we're not allowed to leave after dark. And if we were, there's nothing to see until you get close enough to touch or within 5 feet of the fire.
These things are all we have after work - the team, the cats, the chickens. Only a little privacy. What will happen if that little precious alone time is spent communicating with more people? Adding such a powerful tool might just be adding one more thing to support, to manage.
Another project asked me the other day if I had a carpenter to lend, they needed to build some shelves for a new warehouse. Proceeding cautiously, I asked about the scope of work for the guy. Somewhere in the explanation were the words "electric saw." No flipping way am I going to give you this guy I have integrated into my team, who knows how and is willing to saw by hand every plank. I don't care if it goes faster for you, when I get him back, surely he's not going to want to saw planks by hand anymore. Not for me at least. And even if I get him an electric saw, what good is it going to do him when we leave, or his contract is up and there's not a power outlet capable of supporting an electric saw for 100 miles in any direction - leaving him discouraged with the tedium of the hand saw. No, he's happy now, he works hard, we pay him well and he builds fine enough quality fast enough.
I feel kind of like a puritan grump recounting a story like that but I can't help but remember it when I think about getting internet here. That we have to base our work and our lives on a solid foundation. We're already in a quicksand field. Adding more weight to the building, hoping that it will reinforce that foundation by making our lives more comfortable and communication easier and cheaper, knowledge more available, neglects the possibility that it also makes the structure heavier and maybe more prone to sinking.
See you on Facebook in about 6-8 weeks...
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