March 14, 2024 10:28 am

My physical relationship to the internet

Where I live there is very spotty cell service. If I'm not connected to WiFi at home or at the market, my connectivity to everyone is sort of fire and forget – the messages will go out, the messages will come it, but not immediately.

The feeling is what I go over the hill and all of a sudden my phone blows up with notifications, then I'm off grid for the next few miles.

Coverage is not better inside, or on the road or something – I get better service way out in the woods behind my house than I do on the town green.

I'm used to this reality that its jarring when I take the train back to the city. At first, coverage is really bad on the train. I'll tether the laptop to the phone, and watch the packet loss slowly improve right up until I get to grand central.

At home, everything is downloaded to the phone. PocketCasts streaming feature is basically pointless for me, I need to wait till it's downloaded before getting in the car.

When I get to the city, the process is inverted. Why would I connect to the hotel's WiFi when it's so much easier and more reliable to tether through the phone?

The internet on my home turf is more like being in an airplane – it works under certain situations, but it needs to be offline first.