I'm leaving the Internet for a year

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-without-internet

by Braasch • 14 years ago

139 106 14 years ago

graeme5• 14 years ago

That's a fascinating experiment. I just tried 30 days without the internet (at home). But I still used it in cafes, whereas Paul is disconnecting completely.

I think he's going to find many little points of friction that he wasn't expecting. So many non-internet exchanges now end with "sure, send me an email" or "Sure, just go to our website and..." The infrastructure to serve non-web users still exists, but it's fading.

I personally decided to go back to the internet. I'm doing an online course with Udacity; cafe bandwidth didn't cut it.

If I were just doing writing, I actually would go without a home internet connection. It's a much more productive system if your work doesn't require access. But my work now does, and there was too much friction.

If I were doing technology writing, like Paul...well, I'd love to know how this turns out.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

For many things (In the UK at least) there is still a non Internet infrastructure for interfacing with things like Government departments and banks.

But many other times there simply is not, I remember a few years ago (maybe around 2007) job hunting and asking for an application form and being told that all applications had to be made online.

Also for some of the systems I have developed we have ended up using email address as a uniquely identifying piece of information for each customer which basically means that it is a mandatory field whenever a record in the DB is created and I would guess many others have done so too.

there• 14 years ago

Maybe some day we'll have public phone-to-Internet relays where you call an operator and tell them to navigate a website and read it back to you, like the text-to-phone relays the deaf use.

unimpressive• 14 years ago

I like this idea. However, one must take into account the cost of having a human-operator read back a website to you.

Maybe as synthesized speech improves you could have a viable service like this using computer programs as the operator.

It'd be one way to cut back on your Internet addiction. You'll certainly reevaluate the worth of online discussions when you have to actually listen to them play out while you sit there.

crusso3• 14 years ago

Maybe he should ditch electricity and plumbing too? I mean, if you're going to figure out how this one technology has infested your soul, why not go all the way?

I'm sure there are some Amish* communities that would take you in and let you hammer some nails while you get back to your non-technological inner being.

* That's always what they seem to do in movies to the point of being a cliche.

Cushman4• 14 years ago

Is this a serious suggestion? It reads like you're mocking him, which is pretty uncalled for, but I can't be sure.

crusso3• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call it serious or mocking, rather I'd call it whimsical speculation designed to generate conversation. I find your attempt to suppress my whimsical speculation designed to generate conversation to be pretty uncalled for.

civilian• 14 years ago

Can't it be both? Paul should seriously abandon these other technological changes. It'll make his year much more of an experience!

Meanwhile, we'll be laughing about it.

graeme5• 14 years ago

The internet is pretty distinct. It changes how we think and perceive the world.

Electricity is very impactful. But most things that it provides had analogues, at least for the middle to upper classes. Servants fulfilled the role that appliances now play. Horses provided fast enough transport, because the scale of cities were smaller, etc.

All analogies will break down somewhere, but most modern electrical conveniences have fairly close analogues in the past. But nothing seems like the internet.

crusso3• 14 years ago

Imagine a culture that was pre-electricity. Bring someone from that culture to 1990. Show them cell phones, televisions, space travel, etc. Imagine the cultural shock... the "advanced technology == magic" effect.

Now imagine showing someone from 1990 what things are like in 2012 with the internet we have today. While they would think it's "neat" and even "amazing", the magic effect would not be there.

The internet is cool, no doubt, but it's not the leap that electricity has been.

sassafras2• 14 years ago

It's useful to keep in mind McCluhan's adage "the medium is the message". It's the way a new medium influences culture in and of itself that has the greatest impact on us, not the content it carries.

Perhaps a better analogy for the Internet would be the printing press, but either way, it was arguably the ubiquity, accessibility and automation of electric power that changed society the most. Similarly, the fact that we can whip our phones out and query Wikipedia over a lunch discussion to settle a bet is much more revolutionary than the content of the article, or even the breadth of Wikipedia itself.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

I think it was Milton Friendman who pointed out that other than transportation, communication and medicine the increasing standard of living had almost exclusively benefitted those who weren't rich -- and had benefitted those who were in the bottom of that society the most.

You don't need indoor plumbing once you have servants; You don't need read-to-eat dinners when you have cooks and you don't need a dish-washer or vacuum-cleaner when you have maids.

This even goes to entertainment. When you can afford to hire a musician you don't need a music player.

K2h2• 14 years ago

What was the quote I heard recently on NPR.. something like:

"Without internet it is back to 1970, without electricity, its back to 1890"

something like that anyway.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

Any idea what show that was?

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

I spent 20 years without Internet. I'll give it up when you pry my unlimited-3G iPad from my cold dead fingers. (Until then, I'll be figuring out how to have it surgically implanted.)

tptacek2• 14 years ago

It's been done before:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/offline/features/2010/lif...

gsivil• 14 years ago

I will be running the marathon under three hours. Top comment: It has been done before

danellis• 14 years ago

You seem to be interpreting the comment as suggesting that there is no point in the endeavor. It can equally be read as simply offering another perspective or showing what might be expected.

MattGrommes• 14 years ago

Sheesh, what a pain in the ass this will be. Not paying bills online, not making plans over email, etc., etc. The idea of not letting "the Internet" into unknown corners of your life is fine but I do the same thing by _paying attention_. This reminds of the regular Information Overload articles that get written about how the writer has too much stuff to pay attention to. When I read those I always think "you're doing it wrong". Control your technology, don't let your technology control you.

icebraining• 14 years ago

Control your technology, don't let your technology control you.

Or the lack of it.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

> Not paying bills online, not making plans over email, etc., etc.

If he's married, I'd wager 90% of those things will still get done over the internet; but instead of clicking a mouse, he'll ask his wife.

cocoflunchy• 14 years ago

I think the part where he says: ["Internet use" includes web browsing from any device, asking anyone to web browse for me, surfing the internet over someone's shoulder] means that he won't ask someone to do it for him...

mst• 14 years ago

My bills pay themselves via variable direct debit, most of which I set up over the phone.

augmentech• 14 years ago

The following services are best done via internet and will be full of friction to substitute an alternative: 1. Remote desktop sharing and web conference calls 2. Remote learning / webinars 3. Bank transactions (web banking) for bill pay, instant wires and archived bank statements, etc. Yes, a phone call to the 1-800 could work, except for payments and immediately available bank statements. 4. Music video of the latest Rebecca Black hit exclusively available on Youtube only (lol right?) 4. 4.

adestefan• 14 years ago

3. Bank transactions (web banking) for bill pay, instant wires and archived bank statements, etc.

We used to put these things called checks into little paper envelops. We then put an inexpensive stamp onto them an deposited them in mailboxes. About 3 days later our bills were magically paid.

In all honesty does anyone actually have hard numbers on the number of people that actually use online bill pay? I'll willing to bet that a larger number of people still pay via a mailed check.

dragonsky• 14 years ago

Maybe in the US and for business transactions, but the remainder of the world seems to have taken to online and automated phone payments almost exclusively.

dm83• 14 years ago

Couple of years back I hiked in Himalayas and there was no access to Internet for 15 days. Not just Internet but no cell phones, TVs, iPod etc. For first 3-4 days when we were still in rural towns of India, we had electricity but after that we had no access to electricity. I must say it was the best experience of my life. I don't think I missed anything at all. As far as author goes, 1 year is a really long time. I'd love to hear after 1 year.

kelnos• 14 years ago

I don't think 15 days is enough to get over the initial novelty and "honeymoon period" to be really sure it's so great.

After all, you're here now, back on the internet, posting on HN.

It is a good indicator that all of us could probably stand to gain from unplugging for a while every now and then.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

It's one thing to go on a vacation and cut yourself off. It's another thing to cut yourself off for the day to day grind.

personlurking• 14 years ago

Here's one guy's experience of life (5 months of travels through Africa) before cell phones and, in general, most modern technology.

http://www.quora.com/Mobile-Phones/What-was-daily-life-like-...

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

but how did you plan the vacation? I imagine you used the Internet pretty extensively.

You didn't give up the Internet, you just went somewhere that didn't have it. Your time was spent doing something else, and you (probably) had plans on how to get around already.

If you gave up the Internet before you planned your trip, could you have gone?

cpeterso3• 14 years ago

Or if he used the Internet to schedule a one-way trip there, how easily could he get home without using the Internet?

dm83• 14 years ago

No. I went with the specific purpose of living life in its purest form. No technology to interrupt life. I did it as an experiment too. The only thing that I missed was GPS but rest other things were superfluous. So I've realized only GPS is a "painkiller". Rest other things are vitamins.

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

Having followed Paul's writing for awhile, I feel like I get where he's coming from and what he hopes to do with this endeavor. I really respect that.

But I still have to question the viability, and ultimately the value, of this honestly rather extreme abstentionism. If he were moving to a village in Thailand, things would be different – he'd be surrounded by people who don't need the internet, and the society he'd be living in wouldn't expect him to use it.

But, as far as I can tell, he's staying in NYC. The penalty for disconnecting is going to be disproportionately greater there than it would be in a society that doesn't expect even its homeless to be able to get government forms from an internet-connected computer in a public library. He can try to live in New York circa 1992, but he's ultimately going to be expected to live in New York 2012.

I think a more productive self-denial would be to limit one's internet usage to libraries and internet cafes. Cancel the FiOS and 4G, divorce yourself from Twitter and email, but leave the option open of making a trip down to the library to take care of the things in your daily life that actually require the internet.

tomjen33• 14 years ago

Oh absolutely.

My parents moved to city that they had never been to at about that time. My mom had to call the directory to ask for realtor so they could find some place to live.

It was back when people actually used the phonebook to look up phone-numbers. It is that long ago.

Today almost none of the tech in available. Payphones still exist, but you have to know where they are -- and they are not exactly cheap.

Heck he can't even buy stuff at a supermarket, since those computers are almost certainly wired to send the purchase information back to be mined for data. And that wasn't unheard of back then. Today? Do they even have a directory anymore?

cjoh• 14 years ago

Agreed. If he's looking to "disconnect" it'd be more interesting to see him also go rural for a year.

zmmz2• 14 years ago

I disagree.

I think we all know that it's possible to "go rural". Many have done it.

What Paul is doing is far more interesting and valuable to him as a tech journalist. I see this as a research project, not as a rejection of the web. To quote:

> Now I want to see the internet at a distance. By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I'm so "adept" at the internet that I've found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I'm pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn't belong.

He will still live in NYC, still write tech articles, but by disconnecting he will constantly have some distance from the material. I will be happy to read his observations on the field around him through his new perspective.

nekojima• 14 years ago

"If he were moving to a village in Thailand"

Having spent a few months in a village in Northern Thailand, I was quite happy on the speed our internet connection was usually providing us. Generally used for checking email, skype, news and that passive income sources were still working.

Going rural in more remote places, where the area is cut off by rain or snow for some months of the year is far more challenging and interesting, at least for me. It shouldn't be, its the lives of the folks who live there everyday, we're just rather more lucky, most of the time.

When I lost house connected internet for a week, having to use libraries and cafes in Canada was far more challenging, in terms of scheduling time to go and use, than it was using the internet in a rural Thai village.

Good luck paying bills and checking your bank account (ATMs are an alternative) & investments when you can't use the internet & they now issue e-bill/e-statement, unless you pay extra for paper.

Retric• 14 years ago

If you combine the fraction of my FIOS and Cellphone bills that go to internet connectivity I am probably spending over 100$ a month. While ATM's and checks are annoying on net I would probably save money.

maguay• 14 years ago

Actually, I've gotten 3G coverage in the remotest parts of Thailand, places that only got electricity this year. I had more trouble staying connected in small towns and such in the US!

ramanujan• 14 years ago

It is pretty interesting to list everything internet-related (from VOIP to bill payments to search) and realize that we're in a period similar to the era in which electricity became a utility. In the early 20th century, electricity was still uncommon in many places; Lenin's slogan[1] in the 1920s was that "Communism = Soviet Power + Electrification of the whole country".

Paul David[2] is an economic historian who pointed out that factories were completely redesigned once people realized they didn't need to be centered on a steam engine:

  Electric light bulbs were available by 1879, and there 
  were generating stations in New York and London by 1881. 
  Yet a thoughtful observer in 1900 would have found little 
  evidence that the "electricity revolution" was making 
  business more efficient.

  Steam-powered manufacturing had linked an entire 
  production line to a single huge steam engine. As a 
  result, factories were stacked on many floors around the 
  central engine, with drive belts all running at the same 
  speed. The flow of work around the factory was governed by 
  the need to put certain machines close to the steam 
  engine, rather than the logic of moving the product from 
  one machine to the next. When electric dynamos were first 
  introduced, the steam engine would be ripped out and the 
  dynamo would replace it. Productivity barely improved.

  Eventually, businesses figured out that factories could be 
  completely redesigned on a single floor. Production lines 
  were arranged to enable the smooth flow of materials 
  around the factory. Most importantly, each worker could 
  have his or her own little electric motor, starting it or 
  stopping it at will. The improvements weren't just 
  architectural but social: Once the technology allowed 
  workers to make more decisions, they needed more training 
  and different contracts to encourage them to take 
  responsibility.

We can probably do yet another iteration on factories once the existence of ubiquitous data fully sinks in. For one thing, machines can now know the states of other machines in the factory and optimize their production accordingly. I guess Honda's dark factories are the first version of this.

The overall phenomenon is really just Marc Andreessen's thesis[3] in another guise. Today, "Software is Eating the World", and software engineers + the internet are automating processes and arguably obsolescing many jobs. But if we warped back 80-90 years or so, we'd say that "Electricity is Eating the World", and electrical and mechanical engineers were the ones automating processes and obsolescing jobs.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO_plan

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_undercover_economist/...

[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...

6ren• 14 years ago

Removing constraints (aka increasing flexibility) seems like a good bet, even if you don't know exactly how it will be helpful (all things being equal - i.e. you don't add new constraints/trade-offs) . There are forces/demands applied to everything, and things settle into an equilibrium of trade-offs between those forces (provided you don't add onerous new constraints). If you release some constraints... you can enable a shift to a new equilibrium of trade-offs.

The greater the number of constraints you can release, to a greater degree, the more likely you are to prompt a revolution.

zmmz2• 14 years ago

Thanks for sourcing your article!

Could you also provide a link to more information about "Honda's dark factories"? I have no idea what it is, and Google did not help me.

carguy19832• 14 years ago

Life before the internet was incredibly boring most of the time. You spent the majority of your free time figuring out ways to wring the most value from the 10% of time spent doing actual things with actual people.

A lot of it was filled with TV and moving around needlessly (to get things, to send things, to be somewhere at a certain time to pick up the phone...). It really sucked.

drostie2• 14 years ago

I thought that this attitude was sufficiently funny that I decided to put it into a Philosoraptor image, which I think is reasonably appropriate: http://drostie.org/before_lolcats.jpg

ars3• 14 years ago

You've been here long enough to know that this kind of stuff is not desired here.

k-mcgrady• 14 years ago

It all depends on you and your lifestyle. I know a lot of people who rarely use computers and when they do they get what they need and shut it down again. I'm guessing you (,like me,) spend most of your work day and free time on a computer. Other people go outside, play sports, build physical things, play music etc. There are many opportunities for entertainment away from a computer.

I think this is important though. I was part of the last generation that spent most of my childhood without computers (born 1990). We didn't have our first computer until I was 6 (my uncle built it as a gift for me - it ran MSDOS + had 2 games on it). Most of my time was spent outside playing sports and building things. As I got older and go my first games console (N64) I spent more time using computers but most of it was still spent outside.

When I look at my younger family members who have grown up with the internet it surprises me how little time they spend outside. When they visit friends they play games on the computer. Being 'grounded' and not allowed out is no longer a punishment. Being made to go out and not use the computer is.

I think it will be very interesting to look back 50 years from now and see how much of an impact this has on peoples' development. Will people born with computers evolve significantly differently from those born without them?

zerostar07• 14 years ago

It's not really a reversible change, but i do think it will eventually make people less reliant on each other, and societies will be much more diversified and fragmented than the current, mass-media-driven post-industrial city culture.

I grew up without the internet; i don't think we are that far apart or disconnected from the first internet generation.

wavephorm2• 14 years ago

  Life before the internet was incredibly boring most of the time.

It's pretty boring most of the time today too. It seems to me as if the more "painless" our society becomes (less hard labor, more free time, movies, and porn), the more boring it becomes. Reading Twitter gives me a headache these days. Oh, you retweeted that someone I don't know went to a concert that was good. That's nice. Really, I don't give a shit.

I constantly switch sides. The internet makes me think we're heading toward the Huxley scenario. And the government, with their SOPA/CISCPA actions make me thing we're heading toward the Orwellian scenario. And it is still to be decided which direction we end up.

carguy19832• 14 years ago

What I meant was the internet helps me do things in the real world.

narrator• 14 years ago

One thing about life before the Internet was that social connections were used for finding out information. Nowadays people just go on the Internet and find it. Knowing a lot about a lot of things doesn't really count for much. I used to program Macs in the 90s and you'd get these big old Inside Mac books and maybe a good Primer book and if you got stuck, there was no stack overflow. You just had to go ask somebody. People maintained friendships because they might need information from that person. Now that's become totally obsolete.

aaronblohowiak• 14 years ago

I just find the questions I get asked are more interesting.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

It was incredibly inconvenient you mean?

In the mid-90s, before broadband proliferation, I managed to get from London to Manchester via train (200 miles) which takes bloody forever. When I got there, I realised I'd forgotten the damn software I was supposed to be installing (100Mb of deployables). That resulted in an additional 400 mile round trip to London and back via slow train.

A 2 day install job took 4 days and several hundred pounds.

Now I'd just log in to their kit and install it from the comfort of my favourite chair in 10 minutes :)

ars3• 14 years ago

Wouldn't it have been cheaper to express mail it?

IsaacL• 14 years ago

I tried Tim Ferris' "media fast" idea recently, though I only lasted 2 days (he recommends a week). No surfing, magazines, books, newspaper, TV...

I noticed I was bored, but I also felt that maybe it was good to be bored, at least once in a while. Having your desire for entertainment/attention constantly satisfied is just as unnatural as having your desire for sugar/fat/carbs constantly satisfied. Practicing meditation maybe helped me see that boredom can be beneficial.

Two other things I noticed: I suddenly had masses of free time. Previously, spare time was mopped up by surfing or reading books on my iPad. And while at the station I got the urge to look up something on my smartphone, remembered I wasn't allowed to, and rediscovered the forgotten experience musing about a question I had no way of finding the answer to.

Meiscooldude• 14 years ago

Hehe, I have that old Nokia he was looking at in the shop. Dumbphones rock!

nerdfiles3• 14 years ago

For the past couple of months I've lived without iPhone (with Prompt and Textastic) or phone for that matter (except for the occasional Skype call). I've tried to restrict my development and general Web usage to ~2 hours a day. I recall bumping into a colleague at around 3-4a.m. We had a smoke and then he got called away to do tech support on some web app he had been contractually obligated to support.

Given experiences like that, and my previous work schedule: In the meantime, I've played in the park; re-learned futball to where I can perform advanced, intensive dribbling; re-experienced my long distance running regimen with old friends; progressively mastered the track bike (in complex traffic scenarios, track standing, skid stops, heel stops, etc.); re-organized my thoughts in ordinary language philosophy, contemporary neuroscience, quantum mechanics, Wittgenstein and Spinoza; I've begun a semi-daily writing activity; longboarding; road tripping; skipping stones; befriending animals; etc.

These are the activities which contrast with $ pip install -r reqs.txt or reading another API or vim or bash scripting.

But what else have I noticed?

Daily I sit underneath the Texas sun, and watch. I watch people use these devices. I see IE everywhere and hours upon hours of people fumbling with that. Or texting. Playing some app or Twitter.

It's beautiful, as I sit under the sun, silent. It upsets me how so many able bodies opt for such narrowly prescribed lifestyle.

This argument often turns into ad hominem or red herring involving luddites, Amish, throwbacks, vintagers, etc.. But this text-based lifestyle is a choice too, you know, regardless of how "technologically savvy" or "liberated" or "autonomous" or "anonymous" one is.

guywithabike• 14 years ago

What's your job / how do you pay your bills?

nerdfiles3• 14 years ago

Freelance front-end development. Python mostly.

olalonde• 14 years ago

Lots of applause lights in there (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/). I'm pretty sure things are not nearly as bad as you seem to believe.

nerdfiles3• 14 years ago

It's largely anecdotal, personal writing. So your description of my style may be technically accurate, but I feel your point suffers as a Mary-the-Color-Scientist observation.

Take Paul Grice's Maxims for conversational exchange: Many maxims are at play, and we shouldn't expect for anyone to be "in control" of their execution of a maxim (maxim of relevance, truth, etc.). And an important point is that Grice notes a maxim of relevance: relevant _information_.

Do I aim to supply anyone with _information_ with my post? Am I giving you information? From my post, does it seem like I, the author, would see _information_ as imperative to my point? Yes, naturally programmers expect an optimally informative state such that transaction might occur, but...

Please, just read the sentences. I'm not a politician trying to convince you. I am a human being with an approximate grasp of Academic English. I mean, you're re-labeling my style with "UNINFORMATIVE."

How do you expect me to take that?

And "as bad as you seem to believe." Please point to anywhere in what I have written that suggests I have described an overarching state of affairs to which we should all direct our attention.

My point is nothing more than "it is a lifestyle choice amongst many". Of course as someone who works out daily, as my anecdotal bits clear emphasize, I am at once suggesting my own bias. But "things"... I'm nowhere in that post talking about _things as they are_ or "the grand scheme."

You've applied that concept, not me. I'm mainly interested in this idea that _Everything before the Internet is boring_. I am thinking in terms that we have all well acknowledged: hours spent in front of a screen. The 5:01 developer intuits this. When I consider my hours not spent in front of a screen, I have sport, books, travel, etc. Others have this as well. Sometimes family or quite simply that too-sunny-fucking-idyllic-sunday feeling that tells you: What I am discussing here, with this poet, must be more interesting than work. So my point is actually a request for us to halt the discussion. Before we talk about values (good, bad, etc.), let's first acknowledge that it is a lifestyle. We should understand the values of the lifestyle (notably the one the original author seems to reject).

And as a follow-up: What motivates this linguistic policing?

ottoweibraun• 14 years ago

I specifically signed up to express my appreciation of your post - thanks for taking the time to comment. You very effectively articulate my own apprehension about our emersion in digital technologies and the compromises we possibly make as a consequence. It would be foolish (and futile) to extol a new luddistism; I fully appreciate the benefits of internet technologies working in the field myself but I think maybe we would all benefit from a more acute awareness of how and why we are using such services as FB and Twitter to determine when they are becoming counter productive. I have personally found terminating accounts for both these services profoundly beneficial.

macco• 14 years ago

Good luck!

Havoc• 14 years ago

I get the part about not using the internet. Easy enough. But not using the internet & still getting stuff done? That I'd like to see.

edwinnathaniel• 14 years ago

I recently spent 5 days without cable and internet connection (that's not quite true, I had internet connection of a total 4 hours) but I have activities so I'm not bored to death.

It feels, relieving at that time. It feels that life can be simpler.

Maybe I'll do that again soon....

wavephorm2• 14 years ago

This reminds me of that guy about 10 or 15 years ago, who made some amazing claim that that he was going to live in his house, sustaining himself entirely from work he did and things he bought from the internet for a year. And then basically everyone forgot about it. I don't even know how that ended. The truth is nobody really cares. Stay on the internet, don't use the internet... nobody cares.

ThomPete• 14 years ago

The first time I moved to the US I always thought I would learn a lot about the states.

What I realized is that it taught me more about Denmark where I came from.

By leaving the internet my suspicion is that he will learn a lot about it and probably get his priorities straight.

If you can afford it, clever move.

jakejake2• 14 years ago

Every few months I see a grand announcement on Facebook from someone or another about how they are closing their account. It always strikes me as a plea for their friends to beg them to stay.

In this case obviously he is a writer so he probably has the idea that he will write a pulitzer-prize winning article about his year spent offline.

I think if you're truly fed up with technology, just drop out. No need to make a big announcement about it.

keithpeter• 14 years ago

I suspect a year writing a book of some kind, perhaps not about the Internet absence. Given the nature of this gentleman's job, I suspect a chunky advance to live off and some kind of plan.

I know this is a very small gesture in comparison, but I now spend time at a small cafe with no wifi and poor mobile phone signal for a couple of hours between commitments on Mondays. Mind mapping on paper and writing on a small netbook. Very productive of ideas.

jakejake2• 14 years ago

I'm totally in favor of unplugging for a bit, although I never seem to do it!

joshmattvander• 14 years ago

I think you should live blog the whole thing. Wait. Nevermind.

Exenith• 14 years ago

Funnily enough, I started doing this last week when I realized that I'm on the Internet instead of learning the things I want to be doing -- martial arts, dancing, woodwork, metalwork, mechanics, hunting, chemistry, making friends, learning to fly, adrenaline rushes, etc. The only difference is that I allow the use of Internet cafes.

You do get physical and psychological withdrawals. I've been having fucking night terrors -- I've only had those once in my life, and that's when I gave up a drug addiction. There's an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and emptiness, but I knew this would happen since I don't have much of a social life.

Everything is slow.

At the moment it's not going well, because it's dawned on me that I can't afford the things I've been missing out on -- can't even afford martial arts classes. I've had no motivation to increase my income since I've just been spending time on the Internet.

However, this is what I've been banking on. The deep emptiness will hopefully motivate me to make a real change, as opposed to the shallow and medicated emptiness I felt thanks to the Internet.

Good luck.

Ben_Burke• 14 years ago

gee...i wish i was wealthy enough to pull this off....seems pretty inconsiderate....if you hate the internet and it makes your life terrible then stop....for good....but I bet you come back because the internet has allowed you to get to this point of un-appreciation. why hate on it?

bearwithclaws• 14 years ago

Two years ago, I read the same thing (by a different author, of course): http://www.slate.com/articles/life/offline/features/2010/lif...

It inspired me to make Hacker Monthly.

shalmanese• 14 years ago

The author is doing an AMA on reddit right now: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/szzm7/iama_technology_...

vph• 14 years ago

This person loves the limelight so much that staying away from the Internet for a year will be a tremendous challenge for him.

andrewpi• 14 years ago

I honestly can't comprehend how he plans on doing his job without the internet. He's a tech-reporter for crying out loud! Relying on magazines & phone calls only to do that job in 2012 seems near impossible.

LVB• 14 years ago

Filling some of the time with a bit of dial-up Trade Wars wouldn't be all bad.

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

celerity• 14 years ago

Wouldn't a better and easier solution be to simply practice restraint and limit yourself to several websites like Google Maps, Wikipedia, Email (once a day), Calendar (in the morning)? Then you can include other sites one-by-one to see which are most distracting, and block them.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

I think not getting a data plan for your smartphone (or using a dumbphone) is a pretty good balance nowadays. I can't think of a single thing I've been missing after my iPhone contract ran out. I still have the internet when I focus on it and work, but I don't run around like a short-sighted, Facebook-addicted zombie on the subway anymore.

I'm leaving the Internet for a year

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