The experiment had its highlights sure – he finally undertook the road trip he always wanted to take to see his little nephews and nieces – but overall, I felt Paul started getting increasingly despondent. The few videos I saw before the experiment started getting boring, had an underlying sentiment that wasn’t very positive.
I remember marvelling at Paul Miller’s “year without the internet” experiment which he notably did as a staff writer at The Verge (still haven’t figured out how that worked). As it turns out, people have been going on these detox adventures for quite some time. Before I get into the “why”, let’s first understand more about this emerging sub-culture.
Sounds horrifying? To someone like me it doesn’t sound horrifying per se, but absurd, and pointless for sure. In essence, you are to wrench yourself away from phones, tablets, computers and televisions – basically anything that’s connected – and throw yourself into a self-imposed digital exile of sorts. The article was centered around an annual event which urges participants to abstain from the use of technology for a whole day. Recent New Yorker article titled “The pointlessness of unplugging” was the source of much debate and heated discussion this month at Digit.
