It started with the coffee maker.

It came from a huge box, all stainless steel and black plastic, engineered to filter its own water and grind its own beans and automatically make a perfect pot in the morning while we were still asleep. It was a marriage of two things that make my world go: coffee and technology. And it saved time! I was thrilled.

I'm not sure when I became so into all that is efficiently automated, illuminated and wirelessly connected. But by the time the coffee maker entered my life, it had become increasingly common for me to wake up with my arms draped over my iBook, and my legs tangled in a power cord. It didn't seem like much of a problem until one morning a few weeks ago, when everything started to fall apart.

Sara was out of town, so I was alone in the house with my devices, unsupervised. My iPhone woke me up, set to make noise like a chirping cricket. I fumbled for it, canceled the alarm and then pressed the icon for the New York Times, scrolling through the headlines in the dark. About then, the wonder coffee pot started to automatically grind in the kitchen. But its usual healthy whir melted into a strained whine and then petered out with a final crunching sound.

I was distracted. I'd fired up the computer to page through a night of Facebook updates. There was a close-up of a friend's eyeball, a YouTube video of a friend's dog chasing a plastic bottle and pictures from the wedding of a friend's friend I didn't know. I stumbled into the kitchen and poured myself a cup but immediately spit it. It was just hot water. At a loss, I posted a status update on my phone: "Standing in front of the coffee maker, bleary-eyed, chewing gummy vitamin D pills and holding an empty cup."

It might have occurred to me that I was a little enmeshed with my social network, made of 500 or so of my closest friends. More than once a day I answered the "What's on your mind?" status-update question. It was cathartic, comforting, like a micro journal with a friendly audience. I spent even more time going through what other people wrote. It was addicting to drop in on people's lives, to observe their slowly unfolding stories. Their eyeball pictures, sonograms, wedding dresses, political rants. It was like watching TV, except I knew all the characters.

I'm not sure when it became hard to go without checking my iPhone. I took it to the gym (there's an app to log treadmill miles!) and kept it under the table during meals, even out at a fancy dinner (so I could take phone pictures of the food to post on Twitter). Staring at the Internet had progressed from a hobby into a reflex. It ate into all kinds of formerly empty time, standing-in-line time and sitting-in-the-coffee-shop time and waiting-for-the-water-to-boil time. But then, I thought, what good was that kind of time anyway?

That night after a day of staring at a screen at work, I poured a bowl of cereal for dinner and headed to the bedroom where my computer was sitting on my pillow. My plan was to do what I did most nights when I found myself alone: gorge on the information. (I'd long since given up reading books.) There would be a starter of celebrity news and pop culture buzz. Then food blogs. Then The New York Times. And then, for a final course, Facebook.

I crawled in, typed an address, and hit return. The little set of bars showing the strength of the wireless network flashed out. I went into the living room and dug the router out of a tangle of wires. It blinked oddly. I went back to the computer. The little beach ball kept spinning. I restarted. But there was no comforting harmonious start-up chord. The screen went blue. A black box appeared, asking me to restart. I did. But the blue screen of death came back. I felt numb. A modem failure and computer crash on the day the coffee maker died? Total. Technological. Meltdown. Panic crept in.

At least I still had my phone. I followed my most soothing impulse. I took a picture of the dead computer and posted it on Facebook. Then I noticed my phone battery was running low. I'd left the charger at work. I stared into its tiny phone face as it went black.

And there I was. Utterly, disconnected. A gust of wind howled outside.

Hours of time stretched out in front of me with no screens to give me information. What if something major happened in the world? What about my e-mail? And all my "friends?" I couldn't even call anyone. I couldn't text. It was too late to take the computer anywhere. I hadn't been in this situation in years. What did I used to do back then?

I paged through a magazine, but it felt so...rotary. Plus, I'd already read it online. I felt itchy. I decided to fix the coffee maker. Something automated in the house needed to function.

I went into the kitchen and pulled it apart. It started beeping. I scraped a clog of ground coffee out with my fingernail. Beep! I reassembled, loaded it and set it. Beep! I turned it off and on. Beep! Coffee beans scattered across the floor. I unplugged it. It was no use. I dug out an old plastic coffee cone and set it up on a mug.

I went back to bed. The only light in the room was the glowing death screen. I shut it. The baseboard heaters creaked and ticked. Minutes passed. Wind rocked the house. And then something happened. Something old school and rotary. There in the dark, with no glowing screens or friend updates, news alerts or tweets, my mind filled with my own thoughts.