Dan Lester

The internet is better than real life

I’ve always said that I like the internet. It’s great fun! More recently, however, I have come to the conclusion that in fact I prefer it.

Prefer it to what? Well, real life, I suppose: that biological relic of the past billion years, the physical construct that brought us to the information age.

I first realised that I was through with real life on a visit to a bookshop. On Fillmore Street in San Francisco, there’s a small bookshop called ‘Browser Books’. It always impresses me when a small business owner runs a vibrant enterprise, and the chap in charge here opens until late at night, engages with the customers, enthuses about books, and does all the other things that a good business owner should do.

Over my month’s sojourn in Pacific Heights I’ve been known to walk in here after dinner, have a look around, and chat to the owner (alright, I’m not that sociable - I just asked him if he sold birthday cards too). If I find a book I want to buy, then I’ll buy it - on Amazon, for half the price. Waiting a few days for delivery doesn’t matter if I already have a couple of books I need to finish anyway. This particular book-buying routine doesn’t mark my turning point, by the way; this is actually an example of the real world and the internet world working side by side, complementing each other.

My final moment of true contentment with the real world occurred on the door step of this bookshop. As I was walking past, I thought I’d see if they have any books on, let’s say, ‘good blogging style’ (as you can infer, I did not find such a book). Anyway, I was about to walk inside, locate a suitable section (’writing’ or ‘education’, maybe?), take a few books from the shelves, and see if the tiny bookshop has anything worth reading. Suddenly in my mind, I compared this to typing in ‘blogging style’ or similar into Amazon’s search bar. I’d be able to view a wider range, read some reviews, and not have to worry about putting the books back on the right shelves.

I just turned round in the doorway and went back home.

Since then, I’ve seen real life as the chore that it really is. Everything about it requires far too much effort. Having to go out to get some food annoys me now. I’m not saying I can’t enjoy eating food, in the right place and in the right company (and with the right food). But the necessity of it… well, just seems unnecessary.

You could argue that such tasks are comparable to installing a server, defragmenting your hard drive, or whatever other maintenance a virtual existence requires. The problem with real life is that is difficult to outsource a lot of these things conveniently.

So that’s my conclusion. Real life is now unnecessary. Let’s get everything on-line.