How long could you last without the internet? Your iPad or laptop? What about your smartphone?
Brave Blogger Gives Up the Internet for a Whole Year--and Appears to Be Sane
If
you had to give up the internet for a day, could you do it? How about a
week? A month? A whole freakin’ year? (Please note that I’m asking this
hypothetically, knowing full well that I can’t even half figure out
where I am or what time of day it is without hopping on Google, so I
know I couldn’t do any of the above. Maybe a day, if a really good Titanic-length
movie or marathon of some favorite show was on. But then I always want
to learn more about something and head straight to the web, so never
mind.)
Anyway, you and I don’t have to do it. The ever-so-brave Paul Miller, a technology blogger and senior editor at tech news site The Verge,
officially gave up the internet for a year starting at midnight
yesterday, so we can just shudder vicariously through his re-acclimation
to actually having conversations on the phone (ack!) and letting his
fingers do the walking (le sigh).
What makes a man who has
dedicated his career to technology take on such a challenge? "I've been
on the Internet for the majority of the hours of my waking life,” he
says in a video posted on The Verge. Being connected all of the time,
every day, can be exhausting. You know that. I know that. And Paul over
there, he definitely knows that. He’s got other goals besides being at
some other person’s digital beck and call—he wants to write a sci-fi
novel, for example—and the distractions of the online world are just
overwhelming.
So he’s hanging up his mouse
for 365 days (almost 364, Paul!) to do things in a simpler, easier way.
He’ll still keep his job, don’t worry. He’ll just submit his stories
via flash drive to his editor instead of, you know, emailing them. And
he’ll use the age-old power of human connectivity to hunt down resources
and conduct interviews for his assignments. It might be nice to have
some down time from the now, now, now world of constant accessibility.
Still, better Paul than me. I have a mini-conniption if my wi-fi goes out and I can’t get rid of this blankety blank BlackBerry fast enough
because its 1.5G network loads way too slow for my liking. June 22
marks the day Verizon discounts me a new phone and I’ll be there first
thing smoking to trade up for a Droid, an iPhone, something, anything
better than this archaic piece of Alexander Graham Bell-era machinery.
Because of course, even that doesn’t move fast enough for me.
I
do think I need to set some hours when I disconnect completely—not a
whole year like P. Miller over there, but maybe from like 8 p.m. until
the time I wake up at 6:30 a.m. I just chuckled to myself thinking that.
And then red light started flashing on my phone and I instantly reached
to check it. Oh dear. No Facebook? No Groupons? No funny emails from my
bestie to rate Rihanna’s latest fashion victory? I can’t dot com.
How long could you last without the internet? Your iPad or laptop? What about your smartphone?
I could if I had to but I am pretty addicted to the internet.
I guess we will find out with this move!! LOL our computer will be on the way, smart phones turned off, and his lap top is pretty shoddy!@
If I'm on vacation, I can totally do it - my grandfather lived in Germany, so our cell phones didn't work there, and he didn't have internet, so there went that as well. It's kind of nice and refreshing!
But at home, I don't know if I could do it. The majority of my life is online, so I'd miss out on so much - my friends and I plan events via evites, I keep in touch with out of town friends and relatives via FB, pay bills online....
Now, if everyone else weren't online as well, then I'd have an easier time :)
Today is National .... 6/19
- Cafe Amber
on May. 3, 2012 at 6:44 AM