Dark thoughts on a sunny day
“Camping?” Gege protested. “When are we going to stay at a lodge ?Atahotel?”
He wasn’t pining for fluffy robes and high-thread-count sheets, I knew. He wanted Wi-Fi, so that he could connect to the Internet and the endless entertainment that it offered.
The twins love camping — getting dirty, skipping rocks into rivers and lakes, peering at slugs, getting even dirtier, roasting marshmallows, fetching pine cones that crackle and pop in the fire, running around in the dark under the moon and the stars — but crave their screen time, too. “You’ll be too busy for Wi-Fi,” I said. We’d planned to meet our friends at a rustic cabin outside of Sequoia National Park — a place with no cell service and no Wi-Fi, we warned the boys. But the morning we were supposed to leave, my friend called with bad news: a wildfire had doubled in size overnight, and though the cabin was safe, ash would rain down on us.
After a couple hours of calls and Internet searches, we settled on a hotel along the freeway, within driving distance to Avila Beach. The twins reveled in the change in plans.
“This is the life!” Gege said, jumping on the couch.
“I’m having so much fun!” Luka shouted, racing around the room.
I asked if they wanted to go to the pool or the beach. No, they said. They wanted to stay in the room, where — they didn’t need to say — they’d have Wi-Fi.
I thought back to a conversation we’d had earlier this summer, about the difference between wants and needs.
“You want toys. A need is something you can’t live without,” I said. “You need food, water, shelter, sunshine, air and love.” “And Wi-Fi,” Gege had piped up. Over the decades, polls have tracked what American consumers consider luxuries or necessities, and how that’s evolved as lifestyles change, technologies become widespread, and the economy goes up and down.
In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who considered clothes dryers, dishwashers, home computers, air conditioning and microwaves a necessity steadily grew over the years, though by 2009, in the midst of the recession, many of those items had become more of a frill.
More than half of Americans deemed mobile phones and home computers necessary, a percentage that must have grown in the eight years since the last poll. And if pollsters started tracking Wi-Fi as a choice, I’m sure the twins wouldn’t be alone in viewing constant Internet connectivity as a daily requirement.
I’d have to agree, as much as I appreciate the times when the siren call of the Internet goes silent and I can dig into my work. While I was writing this column, the Wi-Fi abruptly cut out. At first I restarted the computer, wondering if it might be a temporary outage. I restarted the router and the modem, but nothing worked. I didn’t know whether the outage was due to the cable company, if we needed new equipment, or if we could manage for a couple days without Wi-Fi, if I’d become 10 times more productive, or if our family would descend into boredom or madness. Then I reached into the dusty darkness behind our bookcase and discovered that the modem was unplugged. Crisis averted.
As for the twins, on that weekend trip, we got them away from the Wi-Fi and to the beach, where they tried boogie boarding for the first time. But I couldn’t fully relax; the triple-digit temperatures, the wildfire raging in the mountains in California and in the Pacific Northwest, and a slew of powerful hurricanes turned even more violent by climate change were making me anxious.
As waves lapped around my feet and I listened to the screams and shouts of children, wishing that I’d remembered to pack our rainbow-striped beach umbrella, I wondered if the twins would grow up knowing anything but extreme weather conditions. Would hazy skies, scorching heat and catastrophic storms become their norm? Within a generation or two, would humanity be forced indoors or underground most of the time, relying on Wi-Fi or whatever the technology is then, to give us simulations of our lost world? Would an Internet connection become an indisputable need? Dark thoughts on a sunny day, but it’s been that kind of summer — it’s been that kind of year.
Gege tugged on my hand, ready for a break. While he napped on a towel, I positioned my body against the noonday sun, to give him the shade that he needed.
The twins didn’t want to go to the pool or the beach. They wanted to stay in the room, where — they didn’t need to say — they’d have Wi-Fi.