WS: What’s bad about the internet?
Guy Cribb
The introverted new reality for some youngsters and the general distraction from what we formally knew as the great outdoors is bad, but it is generally recoverable by parental guidance and balance. Also deciphering between valuable and invaluable content is tricky.
Chris Pressler
That it’s not working everywhere and it still takes a fair amount of effort and costs money to make it work at isolated or remote places. I would love to own a private Continentseven satellite.The internet has answers to almost all questions, if they are correct is a different topic. And I am a character who is interested in many topics. It’s a never ending story. I try to avoid surfing the net too much. But I definitely waste a lot of time looking for internet connections during travelling. At the beginning, around year 2000, it was quite hard to get online. I walked several miles to get online once, but then had to eat at a relatively bad restaurant, because of the delicious internet, not of the food. I would say I waste freedom (free time) for the internet. Around ten years ago I tried to send little compressed jpegs from a former military camp in the Western
Sahara. It took ages to get the mails out; this was a massive waste of time.
Chris Murray
I feel like there is too much content these days. I feel swamped by a million videos and my attention span is very small now, .. not that it was ever that
big anyway!
John Skye
Sometimes I find myself completely side tracked without even realising it. I start off doing something work related, and then suddenly find that I spent literally hours watching pointless videos of people falling off skateboards or scrolling through pages of Facebook friends that you don’t even know doing boring things you don’t care about.
WS: Have you any embarrassing internet stories?
Guy Cribb
My email newsletter goes out to over 5000 windsurfers around the world, no one can click ‘reply all’, but once, for about one day only, somewhere in the background my internet gurus were fiddling with something and my guests could reply all. On this very day, the one guest who accidentally clicked reply all is one of the world’s richest men, … who until then was known as the ‘world’s most private billionaire…!’
Chris Pressler
Yeah, the info. on the internet claimed that a beach in the Pacific Ocean I was visiting had a shop and a restaurant. When we arrived there it had nothing, just a few fishermen and a couple, who had escaped the busy life in town. Exactly these people saved our lives as we were stuck 60 kms off the main road in a desert with a broken car, without food and water. Don’t trust the internet 100%. It’s not the expert and perfect travel guide all the time.
Chris Murray
Clearing your search history is the first thing to learn!
John Skye
My mum is brilliant at writing embarrassing comments on Facebook. I think she sometimes forgets that the whole world can read it and it’s not just an email to me personally. I also had a Facebook attack years ago from a “friend”, but I realised just in the nick of time and recovered it quickly.
SUMMARY
So there we go. Plenty of positives in there but most of that is easily balanced out by the negatives, so beware if you are one of those folk with your head down on your ipad, laptop or phone everywhere you go. There is a world out there, real life, real people and real experiences and excitement for everyone to enjoy. And any fellow parents out there: we are the ambassadors and role models to our children, so if every evening we are sat on the couch scrolling through the net on our smart phone then no doubt in time they will follow suit. Folk these days even scroll through their Facebook during a meal, while even at bars all the faces are only lit up by the glow of their smart phones! As windsurfers, we have the glorious coastline to explore nature’s wonders. Maybe next time you go, leave your phone at home or sling it in the back of the car and take yourself off the grid. Be social in real life and not online, surf real waves not the web and enjoy the moment without tweeting or sharing your frolics on Instagram. Social media ironically is pushing us apart not pulling us together; yes there is a time and a place for it but don’t forget those humble traditions that we should focus on in ‘real life’ and not the virtual world. Even the Motley Crew have pledged to attempt a whole mission going back to basics without phones or devices so watch this space. Muzza has even promised not to refresh Facebook for a full hour next Thursday! Yes together we can change the world!, yes, what a statement; I think I’ll post that up on Facebook! – Oops!