Ten days and nights unplugged

http://www.mittal.vc/2013/10/06/10-days-and-nights-unplugged/

by mittal • 13 years ago

43 47 13 years ago

mittal.vc

JacksonGariety2• 13 years ago

Every few months I tell myself I'll turn off the internet.

I never do it.

mittal• 13 years ago

Back when I used Windows I modified my hosts file to make facebook.com redirect to 127.0.0.1.

That lasted for a few minutes.

rogem002• 13 years ago

I changed my password to something difficult to memorise which was stored in an online password vault. The result was it took an extra 20 seconds to login, which proved to be a very effective way to stop using facebook.

ledge• 13 years ago

I was redirecting news.ycombinator.com to local host a few weeks back! It also lasted for a few minutes.

JacksonGariety2• 13 years ago

Oh I've been doing that with techcrunch.com for almost a year.

visakanv4• 13 years ago

You need a compelling reason- a strong push or pull. Otherwise you're overcommitted in your current position. The in-between is a very distressing place to be. Decide on one or the other and commit to it wholeheartedly. You can always return and take the other path later. :)

technotony2• 13 years ago

This is part of the reason that burning man is so meaningful for many people - without phones we have to connect with those around us and be present in the moment. When everyone is like that, it's amazing!

visakanv4• 13 years ago

Nathan Jurgenson wrote an interesting piece about how phones are a sort of microaggression- using it is a subtle act of protest against present company. It's a kind of shield, a buffer that says "I'm afraid to fully commit."

The beautiful thing about Burning Man (I'm guessing- I've never been there) is that it's a self-selecting audience. And self-selecting audiences are the easiest to work with. Think about a comedian facing a tough crowd vs. a comedian facing a friendly, hometown group.

I'm pretty sure you'll find the same sort of cameraderie anywhere that's hard to get to. A mountain summit. A backpacker's hostel. A track meet. Military boot camp. The distance between the self and the other is diminished, and everybody gets along beautifully- so there's no need for phones.

I saw this video on Tumblr of gymnasts at the Olympics- Russian, Chinese, American- none of them speaking the same language- giving each other hugs and thumbs-ups. You probably wouldn't see them on their phones much even if they had them with them- there's too much to take in.

michaelhoney• 13 years ago

"I'm pretty sure you'll find the same sort of cameraderie anywhere that's hard to get to."

Yes, shared effort leads to mutual respect. Nice insight.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

What I don't get is how that's totally acceptable even to otherwise educated people. From what I can remember, reading the paper or watching TV during a conversation was considered rude and often censored, yet cellphones seem to be exceptional. I find it puzzling.

visakanv4• 13 years ago

I've had this experience too. I was a hardcore Facebook user (the village smartarse), and finally got frustrated and deactivated my Facebook account. Also went largely cold off social media. I even left the Whatsapp group my circle of friends are in.

It felt like diving deep underwater after struggling with the crashing waves. Serene, calm, bliss. I find that now when I return to the surface, I approach it with a very different perspective.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

I, on the other hand, have never understood how can people live with all that noise. The first thing I do when I get a new device is shut down all notifications. And taking out my phone while in a face-to-face conversation would fill me with guilt. I still have more phone, but it doesn't have mobile Internet and I only get a couple of calls per week.

Guess it's just one more oddity of mine.

stinos• 13 years ago

Not that much of an oddity: you're not alone. On the contrary, the parallel life described by the OP, is the life that me, you and millions of others actually live every single day. And from the description he gives of his normal life, I for one am happy with my normal life that incorporates simple things like sitting outside in a chair and listening/watching animals in my garden rather then doing the same but being interrupted every minute with a new status update.

weland6• 13 years ago

I have some interesting anecdotes to share about a somewhat opposite situation. I, uh, I just got a Facebook account. I have actively refused it for a long time, and even now I am very picky about it -- my friends list has a bunch of people I don't even know, my location frequently changes and I access it only through Tor because I hate Facebook's privacy policy (or lack of thereof). That being said, I was the last in my group of friends to do it. Most of them opened their FB account years ago. I opened it because one of my friends left the country, but he doesn't use an IM program, nor checks his e-mail too often, and this was pretty much the only way to stay in touch.

I noticed a bunch of weird things about FB-trained users:

* A few days ago, I threw a party and invited two good friends that I haven't seen in a while. Both of them were a bit pissed on me, because I'd moved to Ireland without so much as dropping by to tell them I'm leaving, but were happy to see me and had struggled to make it to the party, because they knew I'd probably be going back soon. Now, I've never even been to Ireland, let alone move there, so I was understandably dumbfounded, until I realized that the last location I'd listed on Facebook was a city in Ireland. The thought that someone would take the location I list on the Internet seriously didn't even cross my mind. Hell, when I started using the Internet, around a quarter of the other users claimed they were from Middle Earth, and I claimed I was from Coruscant!

* Facebook events. I nearly missed a friend's anniversary because he just opened a Facebook event, instead of inviting everyone over. You know, by telephone. Needless to say, I probably skipped over it in my inbox or whatever they call it.

* "Like" and "Epic". I consistently denied using the former without leaving a comment, because I think it's lazy, but the latter is, unfortunately, starting to enter my vocabulary. At first, whenever someone was saying that this or that had been epic, I was literally asking them what exactly they meant. I'm seriously alarmed by this, as our entire vocabulary is being invaded by "lazy" words that can mean pretty much anything you want them to mean. "Epic" is the new "nice". Is it sunny outside? Whoa, what a nice, warm day. Is it raining? Whoa, how nice and cozy. Is there a fucking blizzard outside? This is going to be such a nice Christmas day! Now, my jalapeno sauce was about as epic as the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk.

Needless to say, my integration in this new Interwebs-powered social network has not been without glitches...

k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

> "my friends list has a bunch of people I don't even know"

WHY? This is consistently one of the biggest complaints about Facebook. I can understand people who've had Facebook since it's early days having this problem but if you just opened your account why did you add people you don't know?

ehsanu1• 13 years ago

I was confused at first too, but I think the idea is to throw off who Facebook, or anyone looking through Facebook's data, thinks you are. Quoting:

I hate Facebook's privacy policy (or lack of thereof)

If you only add real friends, there's too much signal and not enough noise to cover it up. This is in line with using tor and using fake locations that change frequently.

weland6• 13 years ago

Because Facebook gets really confused about it. Their "list of people you may know" is quite off, they can't recommend any bar or club in my hometown because I never even listed it as my location. Even the "meet singles in your areas" ads are off. This way, I can stay in touch with my friends and not be a marketing tool for Facebook.

Edit: just to make sure I get my message across the way I want to: I do this because I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but more importantly because:

a) I hate targeted advertising. If I make a purchase decision, I want to make sure I make it based on actual information, not clever advertising. Avoiding clever advertising is a good way for me not to bump into it.

b) I really think this is wrong. I am a programmer myself, and I think platforms like Facebook are definitely not the way technology should be used. Of course, not all of my friends share the same principles, and I don't want that to be an obstacle; I found this to be a reasonable middle ground.

djcrayon• 13 years ago

I would imagine its to fuzz up Facebook's social mapping.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

The thought that someone would take the location I list on the Internet seriously didn't even cross my mind

Firstly, Facebook is supposed to provide information about you. There's little point to providing information that is patently false. Why even waste the keystrokes? If you don't want a piece of information known, just omit it. Thus, people generally expect the information you provided is true.

Secondly, I think we were all a lot more fanciful when we were kids.

weland6• 13 years ago

Firstly, Facebook is supposed to provide information about you.

I thought it was supposed to help me stay in touch with people and stuff, like they claim on their homepage. I'm adding false information related to my location to confuse their nosey advertising probe.

asgard1024• 13 years ago

Come on, 10 days without electronics? That is an amazing feat nowadays?

(I personally could do it without a problem - well, if I hadn't go to my programming job, of course - take a mathematics book, pen and notebook, and learn something new.)

What about a year? How could we have lived just a couple of years ago?

k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

Have you tried it? I had to go about 2 weeks without internet when I moved apartment. The only access I had was the local café and I only used that to send files for work (so I went in spent 20-30 minutes on email/dropbox and then left). It's amazing how difficult it was and how much it changed how I lived for those two weeks.

There were positives (I read more, went out more etc.) but they didn't last too long. The time my roommate and I would have wasted on the internet previously was now allocated to TV. Rather than only watch shows we liked we channel surfed for hours. It was kind of like being thrown back in time to how I wasted time when I was younger.

xradionut• 13 years ago

I've had a good 6 months of minimal personal electronics a few years back. Aside from work, I didn't connect at all. I had a new apartment in a complex which was being rewired for FIOS at a snails pace, my cell phone coverage was shitty and I didn't move in with a TV. Plus my PowerMac had a blown power supply which I declined to replace.

I spent more time at the gym, hiking, meeting people in person, exploring and reading books than ever. It refreshing, but compared to my coworkers, I felt like an alien species.

bscofield• 13 years ago

I found it amusing that going without internet access and a cell transported him "to the early 1900s," as opposed to, say, the mid-1980s.

ronaldx• 13 years ago

Mid-1990s at the very earliest, and arguably later: he still presumably had easily accessible, fast, internet access with wikipedia and google (just, not on his phone) and could still contact other people on their cellphones.

aestra2• 13 years ago

Every week my significant other and I and some of our friends go to bar trivia. Last week our friend brought a lady friend he had been dating for a few weeks and she brought her roommate. These two were quite a bit younger than us (I'm in my 30s), they were 21 or 22 at the oldest. The whole time they were glued to their phones, except when we were answering questions because you can't have your phones out while answering questions. They got all huffy when they had to put them away, and didn't even want to help with the questions because of it. Neither of them wanted to interact with the people around them at all. It was really the most rude thing I ever saw in my life. My friend and her actually broke up over it.

When people pull their phones out when talking to my or out with me, it really really stresses me out. I don't know why I find it stressful, but I do.

andrew_gardener• 13 years ago

You likely find it stressful since they are completely and totally ignoring you and not even trying to be polite or nice about it. Its one thing to be part of a conversation and not really contribute to it (but are at least paying attention and trying to absorb the information) and another to be "part" of a conversation and completely oblivious to said conversation.

This has happened to me a lot in recent years and I find it stressful as well. Probably the biggest problem I have with it is I don't understand the purpose of going out somewhere with people to not participate at all. Why not just save everyone time/trouble and not go in the first place?

jbattle• 13 years ago

If they don't go they can't tweet about it and post a couple of pictures smiling for the camera

aestra2• 13 years ago

I find stress to be a strange response though. Annoyance would be a more "expected" response. Stress is something I wouldn't expect because I associate stress with more of a "fight or flight" situation.

It's something I find interesting.

I also don't understand the point of going out and not participating, or fully participating. If I have someone in front of me, I find I owe them my full attention, anything else is rude. I also am finding it highly strange that it seems difficult for anyone just to sit quietly by themselves without anything to do for 10 minutes, I think its a product of our "always plugged in" lifestyle.

icoder• 13 years ago

One can wonder if they act anti-social due to being glued to their phones, or whether they are like that from themselves and it just showed more obvious because of the phones.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Ten days and nights unplugged

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