Friday, April 12, 2024

Tulum 2024 - Internet Woes

 I awoke to discover there was still no internet. Several of us gathered around the table in the courtyard,  playing with our phones, frantically attempting  to connect, to no avail. During this a call came into the hotel manager asking me for an inventory of what was in my lost bag so they could electronically search for items that could be associated with me. There was a tag on the bag with my name, address and phone number, the tag is bright pink, it is from Eurorail,  apparently they felt that solution to locating the bag wouldn't be enough of a challenge. The number they gave me would not connect to Whatsapp, perhaps due to the spotty internet. I sent an email to the airline later in the day but to get it to go through we had to switch to another of the hotels wi fi codes and move to within about a foot of the router. 

Later in the evening I decided I would just lay in bed and watch t.v. which is when I discovered that they didn't work due to the blackout the previous day. I read, started with Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, he was a master of the adventure genre, later moving to The Further Adventures of Tom Sawyer, at least my vacation reads weren't pulp novels.

I wake on Sunday, still no internet. By turning off airplane mode and turning it back on again, I could get connected, for a moment. I learned to catch up on emails, messages, Facebook and news during meals when I could use the restaurant's wi fi. 

It was not that long ago that we didn't have instant connectivity with virtually the entire world. We communicated by speaking to one another. Today it is a world of texting, bots and websites. The world as adapted to depend on a single technology and when it is disrupted it is difficult for society to function.

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