Ask HN: Have you ever gone without a computer or phone for an extended period?

"Every extension of mankind, especially technological extensions, have the effect of amputating or modifying some other extension." - Marshall McLuhan

I don't deny our new super powers, but you have to take a break to let the perceptual system reset (eyes, feeling, smell, intuition). This is what is getting amputated. We don't realize it because we are stuffing our visual channel with information.

Much of this gives the impression we are powerful, but it's just overloading the circuitry. It's like primitive humans getting sudden access to salt sugar and fat and just gorging themselves.

I spent two years (2014 - 2016) living in a foreign country without a phone, they were some of the best years of my life.

I moved to a new country and there were a couple of barriers that prevented me from getting a phone right away. I decided to forgo the opportunity when it finally arose. I kept a kindle fire, a notebook and pen, and a cheap digital camera on me at almost all times. I can't recommend it enough.

When going new places I studied the location on google maps before leaving home. Instead of getting out my phone to find a place I had to ask for directions. Instead of googling for new places to try out I just walked around and discovered things for myself. Fortunately this was very walkable city. Keeping track of my surroundings mentally was stimulating, and I developed a great sense of direction. I challenged myself to keep track of North at all times (surprisingly easy in a city with streets laid out on a grid).

The language barrier was crazy, but without the ever present distraction of a phone I was able to learn so much. There was no "let me get out my phone and translate this" option, I was forced to learn. I did have a kindle fire that had wifi capabilities, which I used occasionally to send emails in a pinch, but this was few and far between. I kept Anki SRS on it and in those moments that fall in the cracks of life I was studying language flash cards or reading a grammar guide.

When I made plans with friends we had to arrange details ahead of time, usually via email or any one of the messenger apps you can use on a PC. This may have seemed like an inconvenience but it inadvertently introduced more structure to my life. I can remember only twice that my lack of phone made meeting up really difficult, but both times we eventually found each other.

I read so many books in those two years. The order imposed on my life by having to plan ahead, along with removing the distraction of a phone, supercharged my reading time. There were Friday nights where my friends had beer without me because they couldn't get a hold of me, but if I really wanted to I could have reached out.

Anything that I really needed to remember, I just wrote in a notebook. I didn't keep an app for my budget or diet, I just wrote everything down. The act of writing these things down made more mindful about how I spent money and ate food, I didn't need analytics from an app to help make decisions any more.

It seems like you lose a lot of convenience, but what you gain back is so much more valuable. My mind felt clear, when I look back on those years I don't remember all those things I wished I could have googled on the spot. I remember being completely engaged by my surroundings. I understand that living in a foreign country is the thing I look back on so fondly, but the no-phone situation was the music the play was set to. I can't recommend it enough.

Born in 63, so yeah many years prior to those devices becoming a part of daily life. Interestingly was just having a conversation with my son's about the first time I used an ATM.

Anyway, in the 90's I took a year off and did volunteer work while teaching mediation and other spiritual pursuits. I recall being asked to sign in a date and looked at the person at the person at the desk and telling them I didn't even know what day of the week it was.

In the last decade I've done a number of trips with my son's boy scout troop. Multiple weeks in Canada on canoe trips, or hiking in NM. No contact with the outside world, best healing time ever.

You can literally use a nano/micro SIM as a blueprint, and then just normal scissors to cut the SIM to shape. It's what I did the last time I needed to.

I found his manifesto very insight and opened me up to new ideas about technology.

Technopolis by Neil Postman is an in depth analysis of the way technology shapes society. It’s an easy and looks at technology in the broader sense and how the tool shapes the user.