He left
Internet for a year just like now how I dread to go on Facebook, knowing how
much time I am going to waste on it.
And he
was back, after a year of offline life.
He
realized that he couldn’t live without Internet because it is where people are.
No matter how slightly known or how far people are apart, at least they are
connected in one way or another.
I admire
his courage to experiment an offline life, not to mention that he’s actually a
tech-writer. But I still think things could have been different, had he spent
his year differently. Just now, I could think of so many ways to spend my year
without Internet nagging me.
A year
in Amazon, Sahara, North Pole, Tibet or anywhere, where I don’t need Internet
to survive.
But what’s
next?
I still
need to come back. Without Internet, how am I going to tell my stories to others?
How am I going to keep in touch with my friends?
I see
the point of this article. It’s nearly impossible to live offline in a modern
world, if you want to keep pace with it, unless you exile yourself to remote
places where Internet is a luxury instead of necessity. Because writing a
physical letter is simply too official or too troublesome. Because calling
someone you don’t really know is a hundred times embarrassing than sending a
Facebook message, and you might don’t have the person’s number at all.
So I will
keep living online. Love and hate the Internet at the same time. Since we desire so much to be heard, to be connected, as if we are branches of a tree and the Internet supplies water to sustain our lives. And maybe take
some time off to escape this horrible lover once in a while to cure my
addiction to him.
Excerpt:
1. It's hard to say exactly what changed. I guess those first months felt so good because I felt the absence of the pressures of the internet. My freedom felt tangible. But when I stopped seeing my life in the context of "I don't use the internet," the offline existence became mundane, and the worst sides of myself began to emerge.
2. But then I spoke with Nathan Jurgenson, a ‘net theorist who helped organize the conference. He pointed out that there's a lot of "reality" in the virtual, and a lot of "virtual" in our reality. When we use a phone or a computer we're still flesh-and-blood humans, occupying time and space. When we're frolicking through a field somewhere, our gadgets stowed far away, the internet still impacts our thinking: "Will I tweet about this when I get back?"
3. My plan was to leave the internet and therefore find the "real" Paul and get in touch with the "real" world, but the real Paul and the real world are already inextricably linked to the internet. Not to say that my life wasn't different without the internet, just that it wasn't real life.
I'd read enough blog posts and magazine articles and books about how the internet makes us lonely, or stupid, or lonely and stupid, that I'd begun to believe them. I wanted to figure out what the internet was "doing to me," so I could fight back. But the internet isn't an individual pursuit, it's something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.
When I return to the internet, I might not use it well. I might waste time, or get distracted, or click on all the wrong links. I won't have as much time to read or introspect or write the great American sci-fi novel.
But at least I'll be connected.
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