Necessity or luxury?

The popularity of the internet as a pastime simply highlights the weakness of the human will. It is a total victory of apathy over industriousness. It underlines the way in which we prefer short term escapism (which requires no effort) to meaningful endeavours which provide real levels of achievement and stimulation.

Studies by well-being researchers have repeatedly shown that happy people are those who pursue active pastimes, such as exercise, gardening and face-to-face socialising instead of passive pastimes.

Ten years ago, few people spent any time on the internet. The world was probably a better place. Even now, it is possible to lead a full, complete and successful life without the internet, and certainly you can do it without super fast internet. For proof, just look at independent federal MP Tony Windsor. He is one of the two most powerful men in the country. He has admitted that he has never used a computer in his life.

There is however, no link between lack of internet usage and honesty and integrity. Remarkably, the “official” reason given by Windsor for siding with Labor was because only Labor would give us fast internet. Even after his admission that he can’t tell the difference between a computer and a washing machine, Windsor won’t publicly admit that his preference for Labor was merely an adolescent instinct to settle old personal scores with the National party.

The government needs to abandon its $43 billion cable roll out to make the internet faster. If it has a fanatical desire to spend $43 billion on a project relating to the internet, it would be better off spending the money encouraging people to get off the internet and go outside and do things that connect with the real world.

Forty three billion spent on parks, recreational and sporting facilities, libraries, swimming pools and community halls would have produced massive increases to community and individual prosperity. Instead it’s being spent in a way that will encourage us to spend more time on a tool that will probably make us even dumber, less socially connected, fatter and more unhealthy - sure proof that focus groups have already been made stupid by too much internet.