Speed of connectivity and thought

I had the unfortunate experience last Wednesday of out of the office but with a laptop and a tethered blackberry and limited connectivity. Super slow, choppy, not-always-on connectivity.

I wanted to post about this for a few reasons:

1. It is good to get outside of your bubble once in awhile – mine is of a constant broadband connection
2. Productivity is directly tied to speed of connectivity today
3. Using the Internet with a slow connection is a powerful reminder of where we are and how we have left to go

Getting outside of the broadband bubble for me meant using a slower connection via my blackberry. Fortunately my complicated steps to tethering are no longer needed as the latest version of the Blackberry Desktop client for Windows has a single click tethering option. It works as promised and I was connected to the network (in my case Tmobile)

This meant I was subject to the poor data service of Tmobile. Interestingly voice and data connectivity were not possible and every time I had a call I had to reconnect and re authenticate on the network.

Getting outside of my broadband comfort zone was good. It reminded me of how distracting the Internet can be and how completing tasks without interruption is an effective way of being productive. I may incorporate periods where connectivity is off in the future.

I take for granted the speed at which things happen on a broadband connection. I felt like I was rationing my connection only to those things that were mission critical.

I kept Firefox down to only two tabs vs. my normal unlimited amount

Using many sites was impossible. From checking the news, to checking email, I was reliant on my Blackberry inbox more than anything else.

I was amazed at how the HTML or low-bandwidth version of sites simply crawled or were next to unusable with my slow connection. I know that I am sound somewhat like a snob making the assumption that everyone has broadband, which is simply not the case, but it perhaps soon will be.

So does the speed of connectivity limit the speed of thought in any way? Perhaps only in that we are now conditioned to get answers to questions faster and have facts available. On the flip side, thinking through something without distraction was extremely helpful.