The Letter of the week in the week a few weeks back was a wonderful reminder to disconnect:
To the Independent:
“I went to hear James Cleick talk at the British Library a few weeeks ago about how we are constantly subjected to almost infinite amounts of information. I talked to him about this later, and we agreed that self-filtering is an inevitability. Not spam-filtering – self-filtering.”
“I walked home thinking about this, and had a Eureka moment somewhere around Clerkenwell. I threw my iPhone in a bin. I expect a homeless person now has it; best £500 I ever threw away.”
“The next day I bought a little Nokia with a decent-ish camera on it for £50, and downloaded my phone numbers onto it from my laptop. Then I took the laptop into my office and haven’t brought it back. I now live without a computer. It was like giving up drugs.”
“That Saturday I lay in bed reading a book. I have started scanning Time Out over lunch to see what’s on, and now go to see interesting stuff in the evenings as I used to. I’m not sure why this has happened, but it has. My partner has commented on how relaxed I am and how much more I seem to do in a day. I am aware of the common pitfalls of reformed addicts so I hardly ever mention this to my friends. The ones who have noticed think I’m a weird luddite.”
“I feel a little like the only AA person in a pub. They all sit checking their iPhones frantically every minute or so. And me? Well, I don’t”
Tim Pyne, London
Welcome Tim! Not sure about the tramp with the iPhone, maybe a charity would have been better – but sometimes you just don’t worry about what trousers you’re wearing when you have a Damascene moment.
There has also been other pieces recently about disconnecting. This from Rowdy Kittens is a nice piece, plus I noticed another article which mentioned that more and more people are disconnecting from Facebook. Bring it the on. Or is that off.
Have a great bank holiday, UKers.
