My computer makes me ponder

It’s one of those nights when your computer decides to test your patience. I give in to its demands, watching patiently, watching the seconds go by in the iTunes player slider as it moves to the progress of my song.

My computer has chosen to behave today to make me reminisce about those days long ago when dialups ruled the roost. Days when you had to wait patiently while your computer tried to connect you to the World Wide Web. Days when you had to hear the ‘keeeee, cccchhhhhhhh (with the ‘ch’ being the noise you make before you want to kaari thuppify on someone) while it desperately made a connection to some invisible server through your telephone to launch you into the world of knowledge (that the internet was in those days).

When did we become so impatient? When did 6 mbps connections become so intolerably slow? Remember those days when we joyfully and proudly announced to our friends that we have 128 kbps connections in our computers?! And anyway, exactly how are 6/8/10/100 mbps connections making a difference to our lives? We didn’t die without these earlier. We aren’t doing anything exactly extremely productive with the time saved either (thought borrowed from Before Sunrise). But still, it’s totally similar to the ‘how on earth did we find people in a huge mall [substitute with marketplace depending on where you were those days] without cell phones!’ moment.

Anyway, I’m still waiting, watching the circle of dots in the firefox tab go round and round as the browser tries desperately, as it has been for the last seven minutes, trying to load the next Facebook page. No social networking for me tonight.