I barely recall a life without the Internet. Partly due to my involvement with BBSes (bulletin board systems) prior to the Internet hitting the public scene. I have mentioned this before—I got my first modem (300 bps!) when I was 15. I didn't use it much because I couldn't find anything interesting.

I tried again at 16 and slowly started hanging out online more often. It was the first time I could communicate with people without being in person. Eventually, I met Paul (we celebrate our anniversary in June).

Yahoo and OMD, a media agency, commissioned a "cruel" study to see what happens when Internet users turn off the Internet for two weeks. Participants kept a diary of what they did and how they felt.

The Atlantic Monthly reported, "The diary entries were almost uniformly miserable: The subjects discovered—doubtless to Yahoo's delight—that the Internet was more deeply embedded in their daily lives than they had realized. Activities such as checking box scores, e-mailing friends, booking travel, paying bills, and shopping were profoundly disrupted. Across the board, participants reported withdrawal-like feelings of loss, frustration, and disconnectedness after the plug was pulled."

The article says, "The temptation to go online was so great that the participants were offered 'life lines'—one-time, one-task forays onto the Web--to ease their pain."

The research involved 28 participants who received $950 for their pain. It took 750 people to find 28 willing participants. I'm pitiful. One of the reasons I am reluctant to go on vacation is because I'd fall too far behind on Web-related stuff. [ Resource: ETR ]

They'd have to pay Meryl a lot more than $925 to get her to participate in such a study. She also appears in BBS, the Documentary.