I honestly can't comprehend how he plans on doing his job without the internet. He's a tech-reporter for crying out loud! Relying on magazines & phone calls only to do that job in 2012 seems near impossible.
I'm leaving the Internet for a year
91–100 of 113 posts
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#92Having 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…
Actually, I've gotten 3G coverage in the remotest parts of Thailand, places that only got electricity this year. I had more trouble staying connected in small towns and such in the US!
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's useful to keep in mind McCluhan's adage "the medium is the message". It's the way a new medium influences culture in and of itself that has the greatest impact on us, not the content it carries. Perhaps a better analogy for the Internet would be the printing press, but either way, it was arguably the ubiquity, accessibility and automation of electric power that changed society the most. Similarly, the fact that…
The problem with that famous line is that it is absolutely devoid of any meaning. The actual line is "The Medium is the Massage" -- NOTE: MASSAGE -- and it was largely criticized as being incoherent [1]. A lot of post-modern non-sense that was well-timed to a period of social and cultural upheaval among idealistic youth culture. For anyone interested in media commentary I recommend Niel Postman's "Amusing Ourselves t…
I'm afraid you're mistaken. The book you mention does exist, but as graeme pointed out, it's an "unintentional" parody of the original phrase "the medium is the message", which is indeed widely attributed to McCluhan.
It's worth pointing out that McCluhan never wrote a book titled "The Medium is the Message", as the phrase is actually taken from his book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man", which was published in 1964. I highly recommend it, if you're interested in challenging your preconceived notions of "post-modern" thought, whatever it is you take that to mean. This text covers many topics seminal to media theory, which I won't summarize here, but the line you casually discard as meaningless (as well as the greater context surrounding it) is by far the most influential portion.
Seeing as though I explained the meaning of the phrase for you above, I won't repeat myself here, but on a somewhat lighter note I think were he alive today, he would probably be intrigued by your comments, and the medium by which you derived them. The irony would not be lost on him.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#94Filling some of the time with a bit of dial-up Trade Wars wouldn't be all bad.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
Actually, I've gotten 3G coverage in the remotest parts of Thailand, places that only got electricity this year. I had more trouble staying connected in small towns and such in the US!
I have not been to Thailand but can vouch for the problems of small town America. I crossed the country this year, on foot and accepting rides. In parts of rural Texas, my Verizon service either could not be connected at all or would announce to me that I was in Mexico and "additional charges" would apply for getting online. Oy.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#96“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#97[deleted]
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#98Life 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…
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to express mail it?
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#99Life 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.
I thought that this attitude was sufficiently funny that I decided to put it into a Philosoraptor image, which I think is reasonably appropriate: http://drostie.org/before_lolcats.jpg
You've been here long enough to know that this kind of stuff is not desired here.
Re: I'm leaving the Internet for a year
#100Wouldn't a better and easier solution be to simply practice restraint and limit yourself to several websites like Google Maps, Wikipedia, Email (once a day), Calendar (in the morning)? Then you can include other sites one-by-one to see which are most distracting, and block them.