The unplug meme grows
March 3, 2008 – Libby Davy – Print
Great to read Mark Bittman’s article in the New York Times this morning online. Some people might be surprised to see a blogging evangelist type advocating that we unplug, but here at Authentic Blogging, we have always advocated balance and reason.
“I need a virtual break. No, really.”
“I TOOK a real day off this weekend: computers shut down, cellphone left in my work bag, land-line ringer off. I was fully disconnected for 24 hours.”
Read the whole article here… great reading and very helpful.
We are not alone in experiencing what Mark and others are calling Internet Addiction Disorder and David Levy’s work seems to connect with Joanna Macy (see previous post) and the Adbusters folk.
In a keynote address in 2005, Levy asked:
- How can we recognize and establish balance?
- We have an abundance of information sources, devices and technologies. When does this abundance lead to overload?
- We have an abundance of attentional choices. When does this lead to fragmentation?
- We lead full lives with full schedules. When does this become “busyness”?
- We largely subscribe to rapid action and response. When is this speed counterproductive?
Excellent questions indeed.
We recently started spreading the meme of tagging all posts on this issue as “unplug”, using the term in blog posts, articles and we are going to start aggregating them at
www.everywhereisnowhere.com .org (based on the Seneca quote). Not in use yet.
Then we will run a competition for the best words to describe “offline” in a way that does not make it sound secondary to “online” -= maybe “real life” or visceral. Tricky stuff.
Kind of like an antidote. I once ran TV Turn Off Week in Australia with Adbusters.
Came after attending LIFT08 and seeing how much we all need to get a grip - and being married to an ubergeek who struggles to ever go “offline”.
And within the Wordpress community.
Technorati tag is a bit of a jumble, but lots happening there within parenting and other worlds.
Want to help create a (very necessary) movement? Just add a comment on one of the posts if you like and watch this space.
Better still? Set yourself the Unplug Challenge and get off it all for a weekend this spring. It’s a beautiful world right here, right now.
Let us know what happens…
I’m all up for this but not so sure it’s such a new phenomenon. I remember about 15 years ago, then living in London, we used to pretend we were going away for the weekend… and then stay put! So no friends/business called or expected us around. We would turn off all sound, preserve silence, even between the two of us for most of the time, and basically have a cheap retreat chez nous! Suspect 24/7 contact has a lot to do with ego, actually, and more about busyness than business. So yeah! Switch off! Unplug!
I’ve been tagging all my posts “52nightsunplugged,” but I suppose that’s more specific to my project.
I’ll add the “unplug” tag as well.
Hi Libby,
Like the generic ‘unplugged’ tag. I’ve also been using the tag’ ’skeptech’ to refer to articles/posts that are looking somewhat skeptically at the tech side of life.
Anyway, I’ve seen you over at the 52nightsunplugged.ning.com site, but thought I’d add some extra info over here.
My name is Leif Hansen (I’m the managing director of Spark Northwest) and I’m one of the two facilitators for the Soul Tech workshop that was recently shown last week on the Today Show.
One of our participants, Ariel Meadows started her 52NightsUnplugged experiment as a result of our workshop, which in turn was mentioned in the NY Times article you’ve sited in your post (Ariel was also on the Today Show for the live portion.)
While I do think there are some practical things one can do (i.e. bracket one’s tech time with breaks, set some family boundaries, set a power-timer on your wifi, etc) our workshops are really more about facilitating a process that helps people to think about how technology is helping or hindering the achievement of broader life/work goals.
Actually, we’ve just put together a 7 step e-workbook that takes people through the same process. The steps and exercises covered in the e-workbook are basically to:
(perhaps first identify what you like about your tech life)
1. Identifying your challenges with tech
2. Identify the needs trying to get met
3. Develop your vision/goals
4. Finding your focus
5. Finding solutions
6. Turning ideas into actions
7. Sticking with your plan (can be hardest)
I think if people would really take the time to think about what they want from life, and how technology is helping and hindering their moving in that direction, it would be a tremendous first step.
Unfortunately, most of us would rather just turn off our minds, and click on some entertainment. Neil Postman called it “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.
Good luck and keep us posted on your process!
Warmly,
Leif
http://www.SparkNW.com
[...] the full richness of Leif’s comment on the previous post here. My what a helpful community we [...]