September of 2010, I had hit a wall. Smart phones, email, and social media were taking over my psyche and I could see no end in sight. So, I pulled the plug. The Off Switch blog here, was a sort of public diary on why and how I would curb the role of technology in my life. Ten years and 70 posts later, I wanted to take a moment to look back on how the experiment has changed me and what work I still have to do.
After spending the morning reading through every post on this blog—some of it self-indulgent and some of it still important personally—I am stricken mainly with how much is the same. I chuckled at some of the technology references (Gowalla, anyone?) certainly, and some of the minutiae is laughable, but what’s unchanged is that this idea that one benefits from being mindful and even vigilant about technology still has great power and utility.
Ten years on, most of my habits are simply the norm for me now. I don’t miss the things I no longer use but at the same time, I still have to be careful not to slip toward the beeps and buzzes invading every moment… because that’s what they are designed to do. The development of hardware and software has not relented and in the past decade, it seems like the march towards omnipresence has accelerated. Alexa, Siri, smart TVs, doorbells with cameras, and a whole host of devices and internet services continue to flood into our lives but I continue to resist.
Am I better for it? I believe so. Especially as this pandemic has raged on and so many friends are consumed by social networks and clinging to their phones and computers, I have clung to my sense of balance. Even before all this, I have re-learned to live without it and created work-arounds so that I can have many moments of peace built into my days. Like a lot of people, I find myself returning to things like walks, baking, music, and writing—and I do as much of that without technology as I can.
But as I’ve said before, this is a discipline I pursue ever-vigilantly. I am perpetually playing wack-a-mole with notifications and other settings, people still give me funny looks (currently on Zoom), and I do my fair share of slipping into bad habits. Through it all, I maintain that it is the mindfulness and the predilection to not defaulting to the default settings that is the real benefit.
As for where this might take me next, I am not sure. Some of you may have noticed that I started blogging here more regularly in the past few months. I am thinking more again about the devices I do have and what I can do without. Since I am not going much of anywhere, my phone hasn’t been a burden and gets a lot less use, but I have been giving side eye to my Apple Watch and even my iPad. I long for the times when a computer was the device. I have been working on bigger chunks of my day not online and always working to avoid the internet an hour before and after sleeping. It seems that buffer is more important than ever.
Of course, the real gift of this set of habits has nothing to do with technology. Quite the opposite. In the countless hours, days, and months I have cumulatively reclaimed, I have witnessed unspeakable moments of beauty and humanity. The look in my son’s eyes as he watches me with wonderment. My wife’s unguarded strength and beauty. The quiet grace of our dog. Tiny, fleeting details in the city scape, nature or on a stranger. My mother aging before my eyes. How the horizon never changes but the skyline does daily. Mainly it is the sort of details one wishes they had paid attention when they had the chance. Well, I had the chance and I took it.
Before I continue on, I did want to look back on my top ten posts from the past ten years—not on how many were read or shared but ones that represented something important to me personally. For those of you who have followed along at any point, I appreciate you stopping by. Whether you realized it or not, you have been part of keeping me accountable to my commitment. I hope that you have taken away a concept or a setting that have given you back a little bit of your own autonomy.
In chronological order…
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Finding the off switch—and using it
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Folding a fitted sheet
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Phoning it in
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Keep it in your pants
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Courtoisie
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The fortitude of denial
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Even less is even more
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Which came first: the decline of decency… or the internet to show us?
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Addicted
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Don’t look away
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