This morning’s book review on NPR with William Powers, author of “Hamlet’s BlackBerry” gives me even more reason to embrace going unplugged every night.
In his NPR interview the author recalled standing at a crosswalk in the middle of Manhattan, alongside five or eight other people — all of whom are staring intently at some digital device.
“Here I was in New York, the most fantastic city in the world — so much to look at, to see and hear, and everybody around me essentially wasn’t present. These gadgets are wonderful, and they do fantastic stuff for us all day long, but to miss out on your surroundings all the time, which I think we increasingly do — I really question that.”
You can listen to the full interview here.
From what I can tell over at the Experimonth 2010 suggestion forum, this month’s challenge was by far the most popular. It definitely appealed to me at the end of 2009, when online demands of the holiday season (gifts, travel arrangements, e-cards) had me permanently tethered to the internet. Wrapping my online chores up before 9pm every day sounded divine.
Ironically, as my life has slowed down to the languorous pace of summer in the hot and humid South, I’ve been saving most of my daily online duties for after 9pm. I want to delay interaction with any kind of media until after the sun goes down and my daughter is snug as a bug.
As luck would have it, my family’s annual summer trip to the U.P. began on July 1. I automatically went on a techno-cleanse for almost two weeks, which has definitely made it easier to reorganize my schedule as we slip back into the daily grind. (It didn’t hurt that we were practically in Ontario and I’d forgotten to sign up for an international calling/data plan, either.) I also have a couple of friends who relish the opportunity to bust me if I so much as tweet after hours, so I’m a little more mindful than usual about getting online at night. Does the entire Twitter universe really need to know what I had for dinner, or can it wait until morning?
The rules: For myself, the only hard and fast rules are that I only use my mobile as a phone after 9pm, and no computer use at all. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, as far as I’m concerned it’s a new day. If I am just up really late and want to hop on at 2am before I’ve even gone to bed - not allowed.
Exceptions: The only two I can think of is if I bring work home, or if I need to get something done online but was delayed by our crappy internet or childcare.
Projected outcome: I think I’ll fare pretty well this month. Mostly because I live in the sticks and our internet service is so slow that I rarely get on from home anyway.
