I’m in two minds about blogging this post. On the one hand, I’d really rather be on a sunny beach somewhere, reading a good old-fashioned book or staring at the blue horizon.
On the other hand, I really, really want to publicise my Spectator cover story about summer and our addiction to technology (it’s fab!). Then I want monitor any comments it gets on this website, and post it on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Each Like and retweet would give me a shot of satisfaction — ping!
That’s where we’re all at, aren’t we? We now lead double lives, one in the real world and the other on the internet. While we go on holiday our other, internet self still occupies its usual place on the Web. So we’re really not ‘getting away from it all’, at all.
And what’s with those holiday photos that we take, to post immediately on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook? It’s as though we feel we’ve not really visited Devon or Ibiza or Phuket unless someone online has witnessed us doing it.
Why can’t we switch off? Is this trend good or bad, or both? Are we never going to have a ‘proper’ holiday — in the sense of escaping our usual surroundings — ever again? What about our children, who’ve never known a world without the Worldwide Web?
That’s what I deal with in my cover story. Do read it here, or on your iPad, or on your Kindle. Here at the Speccie we cover all digital platforms.
Then do tweet it, please — from wherever you are.
Should you be online while on leave? Tell us, prolific Coffee Housers.