The Joy of Pulling the Plug on the Internet

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Dave Graham (@dakegra) fancies disconnecting from the social media whirl for the weekend and wants to know who’d like to join him … is there a hashtag yet, Dave? …

I came across an interesting article the other day called The Joy of Quiet, by Pico Iyer in the NY Times

It talks about getting away from the constant stream of connectedness that once seemed like the solution to all of our problems and which have expanded our lives so much, to find time and the space to think rather than being constantly bombarded by texts, emails, facebook updates, tweets and the thousand and one other distractions that pelt us every day.

It’s been something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’ve noticed a few other people talking about the same sort of thing.

I recently wondered how I’d cope with a week off from the Internet. It sent me into a bit of a panic, to be honest, so I scaled back my ambitions. How would I get on without the internet for a weekend, perhaps? A day? Twenty four hours completely unconnected from the net. How hard could that be?

Now, to put things in context, I love being in constant connection to the net. Ever since the early days at university, finding out that this computer here could talk to other computers around the world. Back in those days (1991/92) we used gopher, and I remember clearly the thrill at finding myself browsing computers half a world away.

We moved fairly quickly from gopher into MUD’s, spending hours online at the university’s computer clusters – the only place where I could access the ‘net – searching dungeons rendered in glowing green text on a black screen with my friends until the early hours of the morning, or until a postgrad came along to ask exactly what it was we were doing at 3am.

Time moved on and the world wide web arrived. I was doing a postgrad course in information studies around the time that it really started taking off, and remember doing modules on hypertext to link key bits of information together. I ploughed on enthusiastically, getting the library that I worked for linked up to the internet with a 28k modem so that we could try out new sources of information.

In a nutshell, I’m an internet geek, around for a very long time. Nowadays, of course, I’m even more hyperconnected, with my mobile phone as my portal onto the world.

I check my phone when I wake up, scroll through twitter to see what people have been up to, check my emails over breakfast, read interesting articles on the train, surf over coffee at lunchtimes, and again on the way home. My evening is often spent in front of a computer screen, doing Stuff, chatting with friends. If not the PC, then the iPad, or my phone. I’ll chat along with others as we watch a tv programme, with Twitter sometimes as a backdrop. I get twitchy if the battery runs low (as it did last night watching Die Hard with half a dozen others via Twitter), and I’m not sure how I’ll take it.

So. Can I go for long without my phone?

Having read the article linked to above, I’m going to try it this weekend. No phone/internet from Friday evening until Monday morning. I’ll report back on progress. Who’s with me?

10 comments

  1. I suggest that it’s the same as going without anything that’s become habitual and deeply ingrained – unless you have something to substitute (or distract yourself with) you’ll sooner than later be drawn back to the ingrained habit. Think I read somewhere that it takes a bad habit only a few days to get established, but up to three weeks to kill.

    1. Hi Edward

      My plan (and I should have mentioned this) is to keep a notebook close by and note down when I’d have normally looked something up, or tweeted something, as well as keeping a note of what I’ve done instead of sitting in front of the computer or staring at my phone.

      After the weekend is done I’ll be able to look back and see what sorts of things I’d have done!

  2. I reckon it takes three days – if this theory is correct you will experience all the withdrawal and none of the liberation 🙁

  3. No net access? Easy! I often travel to places that have very limited internet access, even in the larger cities. As a result I often go one or two weeks without email or web access. In fact I generally leave my phone switched off and in my bag either to avoid roaming charges or because there’s no service. So there’s no calls or texts either.

    You’ll be fine!

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