One year without the internet: An Interesting Read

[wraith808]

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

I was wrong.

One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was "corrupting my soul."

It's a been a year now since I "surfed the web" or "checked my email" or "liked" anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I've managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I'm internet free.

And now I'm supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I'm supposed to be enlightened. I'm supposed to be more "real," now. More perfect.

But instead it's 8PM and I just woke up. I slept all day, woke with eight voicemails on my phone from friends and coworkers. I went to my coffee shop to consume dinner, the Knicks game, my two newspapers, and a copy of The New Yorker. And now I'm watching Toy Story while I glance occasionally at the blinking cursor in this text document, willing it to write itself, willing it to generate the epiphanies my life has failed to produce.

I didn't want to meet this Paul at the tail end of my yearlong journey.

A great read, especially this part...

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.

I find that after reading that article I feel better since I'd come to that enlightenment without a year sans internet. It doesn't matter what medium(s) you have, it's the choices and priorities that you make that make the difference.

[TaoPhoenix]

Nah, it's a really complex topic and he didn't do enough mental prep.

The "internet" is way more varied than that, to "cut it out cold turkey". There's a REASON 1,000 niche industries thrived on the inherent lack of information before the internet age. Remember the point of Guinness Book of Records? It was to settle silly bar bets that could last for weeks or even months and ruin friendships. An hour on Snopes.com can usually fix that now... if not Guiness's own site!

Scammers? Except for the REALLY slick ones, they get busted say in about a month, and then their bust is permanently searchable forever.

Simple research? THAT's the gold mine we all take for granted! Print a quick map of new places, check the service hours, menus, shopping, etc etc etc, save *weeks* of your life in twelve days.

So no, while we have a *bit* too much info going on, just cut it back. All the news I specialize in, the IP/Copyright stuff, appears *nowhere else*. So thank you very much, I like my Internetz.

[rjbull]

Simple research? THAT's the gold mine we all take for granted! Print a quick map of new places, check the service hours, menus, shopping, etc etc etc, save *weeks* of your life in twelve days.

Up to a point.  Now we're in a world where everybody and his dog has to have a Web site.  It seems to be easy enough to get one set up (I assume; I've never tried it myself)  But then there's a big problem - maintenance.  Smaller businesses just don't have the resources to put their every change immediately on their Web site.  I know a garden centre like that, where their Web site doesn't lead anywhere, their e-mail doesn't work.  It's no more than an electronic poster stuck on a virtual wall.  One of the local photography clubs has a dire Web site because nobody's got the know-how or the time to make it any better.  In other words, the Internet favours bigger and better-resourced operations over the small ones, even though small ones are often excellent.

[TaoPhoenix]

Gawd knows I shouldn't be talking, but maybe some things "Just Are". I have trouble getting started on a website, but I believe I have the material to update one.

A website is just one of the rawest modern things to show you noticed it's not 1992 anymore. At least get to 2004!

[40hz]

You can't shut the world out - best you can do is shut yourself in, as the saying goes.

The problem I see many people get into with the Internet is trying to shove everything in their life through it. Even those times when it makes no sense to do so. It's just another tool AFAIC. Learn how - and where - to use a tool and all is well.

Having come from a world before personal computers and the Internet, I can say honestly many things today are better because of them. And I wouldn't willingly go back to how things were before.

True, with these new technologies came new problems, challenges, and wrongs. But that's just part of the human condition. The levy we were assessed when we got kicked out of the garden according to some.

Nothing new. We'll learn to make our way through this new world one way or another. Or we won't.

The universe will continue on either way.

[wraith808]

^ My thoughts, said in a more concise and better way.