{"id":2039,"date":"2010-07-29T01:28:27","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T23:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/?p=2039"},"modified":"2014-02-05T12:05:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T11:05:21","slug":"travels-without-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/travels-without-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"travels with\/out internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I travelled in South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand back in the dark ages before the internet. I remember my brother told me before I left, that in the future, I could use any computer anywhere in the world to talk to him. Back then I thought, but why would I want to?
\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

self, at 21, on Fraser Island, Queensland, Oz<\/p><\/div>
\nThings have happened since then, and I am very happy with the technology, to the degree that it takes up large amount of my time, contains my work, and hope for a job in the inner, deeper levels of information and data handling and meaning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mount Bromo, Java, Indonesia<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, we travel as flashpackers. Last time in Australia, in 2005, I remember it annoyed me that I had piles of cables, electronics, discs and data in my backpack. I am getting used to it. A couple of years back, I went to Damascus, and my professor wanted me to go to the souq, find a carpet-seller, and show him the (uploaded) photo he took of him a few years before. I stared at the prof in disbelief: did he think I would bring my widescreen macbook along on my holiday!?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Anyway. I remembered back to my jaunt through South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand back way yonder. Not able to read the papers or understand the news on telly, I only got glimpses of what went on in the world when I came to a large city and could buy a Newsweek. If I bothered. Or found a crumpled copy in some dusty mountain village in Sumatra. Grand and gruesome happenings in the world passed me by.<\/p>\n

I dawdled, wandered, splashed, spluttered, lollygagged and pottered around, unaware of riots in Europe, unaware of riots down the road. I had several poste restante, and got news from Indonesia via my family. Four weeks later.<\/p>\n

So now, we pack the internet. And in so doing, we pack our history, connections, friends and habits. And habits is the clue here. I was, back then, cut off. And in being cut off, I was forced to take part in what went on around me. At times it was tiring, at times the cultures and the demands on me was more than I liked, as a female Scandinavian travelling alone. I imagine that if I had internet back then, my 21 year-old self would be online whingeing about the locals, the annoying invasion of my personal space, the incomprehensible customs and reactions.
\nAs it were, there was no Net, and slowly I learned to understand why things happened, learned to avoid it, live with it or enjoy it.<\/p>\n

This is dangerous ground for me: I do not want to glorify the “good old days”. On the other hand, you could say that if I had had internet, I would have been able to connect with locals before I left; I could have googled incomprehensible cultural differences. I would have learned from that, with my fact-hungry, analytical left brain.<\/p>\n

At one point, I became, relatively, “an old hand”. I saw people fresh of their planes, who blundered into and stamped over local customs and sensibilities. It made me cringe. Sometimes I could not explain why, other than “you don’t do that”. Right-brain stuff.<\/p>\n

There are loss-and-gain, obviously. But the feeling of isolation; of being basically cut off (and yet part of a society) for months.. I wouldn’t mind that again. But it is not possible.<\/p>\n

You cannot step twice into the same river.<\/p>\n

-b<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

selling goodies, Bukittingi, Sumatra, Indonesia<\/p><\/div>\n


\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

(the images are all scans from my slides from back then)
\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I travelled in South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand back in the dark ages before the internet. I remember my brother told me before I left, that in the future, I could use any computer anywhere in the world to talk to him. Back then I thought, but why would I want to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45,30,7,10,14,25],"tags":[106,60,404,102,104,105,103],"class_list":["post-2039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-australia","category-digital","category-history","category-media","category-travel","tag-before-the-net","tag-bente-halvorsen","tag-featured","tag-indonesia","tag-malaysia","tag-new-zealand","tag-thailand"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/bali_boat.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pCPJv-wT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":71,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6067,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions\/6067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barebente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}