gee...i wish i was wealthy enough to pull this off....seems pretty inconsiderate....if you hate the internet and it makes your life terrible then stop....for good....but I bet you come back because the internet has allowed you to get to this point of un-appreciation. why hate on it?
I'm leaving the Internet for a year
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#72Couple of years back I hiked in Himalayas and there was no access to Internet for 15 days. Not just Internet but no cell phones, TVs, iPod etc. For first 3-4 days when we were still in rural towns of India, we had electricity but after that we had no access to electricity. I must say it was the best experience of my life. I don't think I missed anything at all. As far as author goes, 1 year is a really long time. I'd…
but how did you plan the vacation? I imagine you used the Internet pretty extensively.
You didn't give up the Internet, you just went somewhere that didn't have it. Your time was spent doing something else, and you (probably) had plans on how to get around already.
If you gave up the Internet before you planned your trip, could you have gone?
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#73Two years ago, I read the same thing (by a different author, of course): http://www.slate.com/articles/life/offline/features/2010/lif...
It inspired me to make Hacker Monthly.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#74Having followed Paul's writing for awhile, I feel like I get where he's coming from and what he hopes to do with this endeavor. I really respect that. But I still have to question the viability, and ultimately the value, of this honestly rather extreme abstentionism. If he were moving to a village in Thailand, things would be different – he'd be surrounded by people who don't need the internet, and the society he'd b…
"If he were moving to a village in Thailand"
Having spent a few months in a village in Northern Thailand, I was quite happy on the speed our internet connection was usually providing us. Generally used for checking email, skype, news and that passive income sources were still working.
Going rural in more remote places, where the area is cut off by rain or snow for some months of the year is far more challenging and interesting, at least for me. It shouldn't be, its the lives of the folks who live there everyday, we're just rather more lucky, most of the time.
When I lost house connected internet for a week, having to use libraries and cafes in Canada was far more challenging, in terms of scheduling time to go and use, than it was using the internet in a rural Thai village.
Good luck paying bills and checking your bank account (ATMs are an alternative) & investments when you can't use the internet & they now issue e-bill/e-statement, unless you pay extra for paper.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#75Couple of years back I hiked in Himalayas and there was no access to Internet for 15 days. Not just Internet but no cell phones, TVs, iPod etc. For first 3-4 days when we were still in rural towns of India, we had electricity but after that we had no access to electricity. I must say it was the best experience of my life. I don't think I missed anything at all. As far as author goes, 1 year is a really long time. I'd…
but how did you plan the vacation? I imagine you used the Internet pretty extensively. You didn't give up the Internet, you just went somewhere that didn't have it. Your time was spent doing something else, and you (probably) had plans on how to get around already. If you gave up the Internet before you planned your trip, could you have gone?
Or if he used the Internet to schedule a one-way trip there, how easily could he get home without using the Internet?
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet is pretty distinct. It changes how we think and perceive the world. Electricity is very impactful. But most things that it provides had analogues, at least for the middle to upper classes. Servants fulfilled the role that appliances now play. Horses provided fast enough transport, because the scale of cities were smaller, etc. All analogies will break down somewhere, but most modern electrical convenienc…
Imagine a culture that was pre-electricity. Bring someone from that culture to 1990. Show them cell phones, televisions, space travel, etc. Imagine the cultural shock... the "advanced technology == magic" effect. Now imagine showing someone from 1990 what things are like in 2012 with the internet we have today. While they would think it's "neat" and even "amazing", the magic effect would not be there. The internet is…
> Now imagine showing someone from 1990 what things are like in 2012 with the internet we have today. While they would think it's "neat" and even "amazing", the magic effect would not be there.
I wonder what the biggest "future shock" for (let's say) a 1995 web user visiting the 2012 web? Video and bandwidth seem like the biggest differences, but as you point out, neither are "magic" from a 1995 context.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#77For 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…
Lots of applause lights in there (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/). I'm pretty sure things are not nearly as bad as you seem to believe.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine a culture that was pre-electricity. Bring someone from that culture to 1990. Show them cell phones, televisions, space travel, etc. Imagine the cultural shock... the "advanced technology == magic" effect. Now imagine showing someone from 1990 what things are like in 2012 with the internet we have today. While they would think it's "neat" and even "amazing", the magic effect would not be there. The internet is…
> Now imagine showing someone from 1990 what things are like in 2012 with the internet we have today. While they would think it's "neat" and even "amazing", the magic effect would not be there. I wonder what the biggest "future shock" for (let's say) a 1995 web user visiting the 2012 web? Video and bandwidth seem like the biggest differences, but as you point out, neither are "magic" from a 1995 context.
Video and bandwidth are impressive - 1995 was still painfully slow for many people. People maybe had 56 kbit/s, but perhaps that dropped back to 33.3 kbit/s because of noisy lines. (v90 was approved late 1998). I was stuck on 14.4 kbps for ages. Oh god. ("Sloppy" is apparently a modem speed simulator. (http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/) )
But I think the magic would be video and bandwidth on a handheld device?
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#79That's a fascinating experiment. I just tried 30 days without the internet (at home). But I still used it in cafes, whereas Paul is disconnecting completely. I think he's going to find many little points of friction that he wasn't expecting. So many non-internet exchanges now end with "sure, send me an email" or "Sure, just go to our website and..." The infrastructure to serve non-web users still exists, but it's fad…
Maybe some day we'll have public phone-to-Internet relays where you call an operator and tell them to navigate a website and read it back to you, like the text-to-phone relays the deaf use.
I like this idea. However, one must take into account the cost of having a human-operator read back a website to you.
Maybe as synthesized speech improves you could have a viable service like this using computer programs as the operator.
It'd be one way to cut back on your Internet addiction. You'll certainly reevaluate the worth of online discussions when you have to actually listen to them play out while you sit there.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#80Having followed Paul's writing for awhile, I feel like I get where he's coming from and what he hopes to do with this endeavor. I really respect that. But I still have to question the viability, and ultimately the value, of this honestly rather extreme abstentionism. If he were moving to a village in Thailand, things would be different – he'd be surrounded by people who don't need the internet, and the society he'd b…
"If he were moving to a village in Thailand" Having spent a few months in a village in Northern Thailand, I was quite happy on the speed our internet connection was usually providing us. Generally used for checking email, skype, news and that passive income sources were still working. Going rural in more remote places, where the area is cut off by rain or snow for some months of the year is far more challenging and i…
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