Tech blogger: 'Back online after a year without the Internet'

Really interesting piece:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet

As my head uncluttered, my attention span expanded. In my first month or two, 10 pages of The Odyssey was a slog. Now I can read 100 pages in a sitting, or, if the prose is easy and I'm really enthralled, a few hundred.

I learned to appreciate an idea that can't be summed up in a blog post, but instead needs a novel-length exposition. By pulling away from the echo chamber of internet culture, I found my ideas branching out in new directions. I felt different, and a little eccentric, and I liked it.

Without the retreat of a smartphone, I was forced to come out of my shell in difficult social situations. Without constant distraction, I found I was more aware of others in the moment. I couldn't have all my interactions on Twitter anymore; I had to find them in real life. My sister, who has dealt with the frustration of trying to talk to me while I'm half listening, half computing for her entire life, loves the way I talk to her now. She says I'm less detached emotionally, more concerned with her well-being — less of a jerk, basically.

Additionally, and I don't know what this has to do with anything, but I cried during Les Miserables.

 

He's as interesting as the people who claim -- and seem proud of the fact that -- they don't own a TV.

 

First-world problems.

 

Or the people who spend hours and days feeding threads about fictional TV stories.

 

I think his conclusion is entirely different, though. He later writes:

By late 2012, I'd learned how to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and discovered new offline vices. Instead of taking boredom and lack of stimulation and turning them into learning and creativity, I turned toward passive consumption and social retreat.

A year in, I don't ride my bike so much. My frisbee gathers dust. Most weeks I don't go out with people even once. My favorite place is the couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, play a video game, and listen to an audiobook. I pick a mindless game, like Borderlands 2 or Skate 3, and absently thumb the sticks through the game-world while my mind rests on the audiobook, or maybe just on nothing.

In a nutshell I'd say the lesson is: It's good to get away from the Net now and then. For what most of us would consider extended periods (a week? could you do it?). But being on it isn't as debilitating as perceived.

 

Yeah, I should have added that his ultimate conclusion is not that the Internet is bad. It's pretty much the opposite. I think he calls it "where people are."

 

Crap, how did society survive for all these centuries with cell phones and the internet?

 

Kids did fine. They played Angry Birds.

Or more precisely, make birds angry by trying to hit them with your slingshot. Before you went over to a friend's house to play. Without calling your mom to let her know where you were or when you'd be back.

 

Too long. Didn't read.

 

This is such a crock.








You were back in time for supper, or you were in deep trouble.