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I'm leaving the Internet for a year

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Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#61

Post by look_lookatme »

Cushman wrote: post #49
polyfractal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think there's legitimate value to the idea-- I'd bet most people would be a lot happier without electricity or indoor plumbing than we'd imagine. I think only someone who has grown up with both of those advances would be able to make this comment with a straight face. Ask anyone who has nearly frozen to death in the winter because they couldn't afford their electricity bill what they think of that statement. O…

You're not talking about going without electricity or indoor plumbing. You're talking about being poor . Of course there's a great deal of overlap, but don't mistake the two. I haven't done it myself, but I have a good friend who spent a couple winters in a cabin in rural Vermont. It's not that bad. You buy enough firewood to last, and get water from the well. It gets cold at night, but you've got a roof and a fire a…

The biggest issue is you spend a great deal of time just doing the things that automation can do in a fraction of the time. If you have a family, "laundry day" is literally a whole day and it is brutal, backbreaking labor. That is already 1/7 of your live devoted to something that is a solved problem.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#62

Post by aaronblohowiak »

narrator wrote: post #55
carguy1983 wrote: post #24

Life before the internet was incredibly boring most of the time. You spent the majority of your free time figuring out ways to wring the most value from the 10% of time spent doing actual things with actual people. A lot of it was filled with TV and moving around needlessly (to get things, to send things, to be somewhere at a certain time to pick up the phone...). It really sucked.

One thing about life before the Internet was that social connections were used for finding out information. Nowadays people just go on the Internet and find it. Knowing a lot about a lot of things doesn't really count for much. I used to program Macs in the 90s and you'd get these big old Inside Mac books and maybe a good Primer book and if you got stuck, there was no stack overflow. You just had to go ask somebody.…

I just find the questions I get asked are more interesting.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#63

Post by Exenith »

Funnily enough, I started doing this last week when I realized that I'm on the Internet instead of learning the things I want to be doing -- martial arts, dancing, woodwork, metalwork, mechanics, hunting, chemistry, making friends, learning to fly, adrenaline rushes, etc. The only difference is that I allow the use of Internet cafes.

You do get physical and psychological withdrawals. I've been having fucking night terrors -- I've only had those once in my life, and that's when I gave up a drug addiction. There's an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and emptiness, but I knew this would happen since I don't have much of a social life.

Everything is slow.

At the moment it's not going well, because it's dawned on me that I can't afford the things I've been missing out on -- can't even afford martial arts classes. I've had no motivation to increase my income since I've just been spending time on the Internet.

However, this is what I've been banking on. The deep emptiness will hopefully motivate me to make a real change, as opposed to the shallow and medicated emptiness I felt thanks to the Internet.

Good luck.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#64

Post by mst »

MattGrommes wrote: post #9

Sheesh, what a pain in the ass this will be. Not paying bills online, not making plans over email, etc., etc. The idea of not letting "the Internet" into unknown corners of your life is fine but I do the same thing by _paying attention_. This reminds of the regular Information Overload articles that get written about how the writer has too much stuff to pay attention to. When I read those I always think "you're doing…

My bills pay themselves via variable direct debit, most of which I set up over the phone.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#65

Post by nerdfiles »

guywithabike wrote: post #37
nerdfiles wrote: post #27

For the past couple of months I've lived without iPhone (with Prompt and Textastic) or phone for that matter (except for the occasional Skype call). I've tried to restrict my development and general Web usage to ~2 hours a day. I recall bumping into a colleague at around 3-4a.m. We had a smoke and then he got called away to do tech support on some web app he had been contractually obligated to support. Given experien…

What's your job / how do you pay your bills?

Freelance front-end development. Python mostly.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#66

Post by keithpeter »

jakejake wrote: post #57

Every few months I see a grand announcement on Facebook from someone or another about how they are closing their account. It always strikes me as a plea for their friends to beg them to stay. In this case obviously he is a writer so he probably has the idea that he will write a pulitzer-prize winning article about his year spent offline. I think if you're truly fed up with technology, just drop out. No need to make a…

I suspect a year writing a book of some kind, perhaps not about the Internet absence. Given the nature of this gentleman's job, I suspect a chunky advance to live off and some kind of plan.

I know this is a very small gesture in comparison, but I now spend time at a small cafe with no wifi and poor mobile phone signal for a couple of hours between commitments on Mondays. Mind mapping on paper and writing on a small netbook. Very productive of ideas.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#68

Post by gouranga »

carguy1983 wrote: post #24

Life before the internet was incredibly boring most of the time. You spent the majority of your free time figuring out ways to wring the most value from the 10% of time spent doing actual things with actual people. A lot of it was filled with TV and moving around needlessly (to get things, to send things, to be somewhere at a certain time to pick up the phone...). It really sucked.

It was incredibly inconvenient you mean?

In the mid-90s, before broadband proliferation, I managed to get from London to Manchester via train (200 miles) which takes bloody forever. When I got there, I realised I'd forgotten the damn software I was supposed to be installing (100Mb of deployables). That resulted in an additional 400 mile round trip to London and back via slow train.

A 2 day install job took 4 days and several hundred pounds.

Now I'd just log in to their kit and install it from the comfort of my favourite chair in 10 minutes :)

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#69

Post by thebigshane »

cocoflunchy wrote: post #44
pavel_lishin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not paying bills online, not making plans over email, etc., etc. If he's married, I'd wager 90% of those things will still get done over the internet; but instead of clicking a mouse, he'll ask his wife.

I think the part where he says: ["Internet use" includes web browsing from any device, asking anyone to web browse for me, surfing the internet over someone's shoulder] means that he won't ask someone to do it for him...

He also mentions it in the very first paragraph:

  I just won't use the internet in my personal or work life,
  and won't ask anyone to use it for me.

Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year

#70

Post by noonespecial »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #62
narrator wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about life before the Internet was that social connections were used for finding out information. Nowadays people just go on the Internet and find it. Knowing a lot about a lot of things doesn't really count for much. I used to program Macs in the 90s and you'd get these big old Inside Mac books and maybe a good Primer book and if you got stuck, there was no stack overflow. You just had to go ask somebody.…

I just find the questions I get asked are more interesting.

I used to get asked things that were effectively trivia, now I get asked things that are more about discernment.
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