In a lot of ways, it is amazing how many changes have taken place in our day to day lives. We are all much more involved with technology… Of course, this also would suggest that this rapid growth rate of technical transformation will create growing numbers of people who just want to opt out…if only for a while.
It is a perfectly natural response to embedding so much of our lives into social networking, keeping up on the news, and an increasing amount of our work load on computers.
Of course, it is also summer vacation time, and to be honest, the following posts reek of this far more than of technophobia (short or long term).
The very idea of ‘getting away from it all’ during an annual vacation is something which predates our current technology boom. It is the very reason for vacations…
My advice is to unplug and relax… We’ll see you when you get back.
How to Take an Email Sabbatical
http://www.danah.org/EmailSabbatical.html
We all need time off. Like serious time off. Time when we feel like we’re able to truly rejuvenate without the little panicked voice chirping away in the back of our heads fretting about the backlog of things we are going to have to deal with when we come in. Information overload can be a very taxing issue for many people. Luckily, many services allow us to go Zen without making us feel guilty. Most of us can scan Twitter without obsessing over all that we missed. And there’s simply too many blogs to think about all that we haven’t read. Unfortunately, email is the one app that we feel guilty about turning off. Why? Cuz the interface is designed to put you on a hamster wheel, rarely ever succeeding at letting you reach empty. You feel accomplished when you get to inbox zero. And then you sleep and it’s all back to haunt you. For this reason, I recommend taking an email sabbatical.
I’m Quitting Email
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/i-wouldnt-say-ive-been-missing-it
It started as an idea. Well, a Tweet, really. What if I just stopped responding to email?
Sure, at first it was said in half-jest after a few drinks. It was me channeling my inner Peter Gibbons — “I’m just gonna stop going” — while I’m sitting here in Washington D.C. completely buried in email after not getting to it all day. But the motivation behind the Tweet and the idea is very real. Email is the absolute devil. And the only way to not be corrupted is to… run away. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
For the rest of this month, I’m not going to respond to any emails. None
Yes, this sounds sort of like a pampered problem and perhaps somewhat of a dick move — I should be so lucky to get so many emails, right? But the reality remains: email is an absolute nightmare in my life. I dread it in the morning; I dread it more right before I go to bed. It’s always in the back of my mind, lingering.
Following my initial Tweets, Colleen Taylor of GigaOm sent me a link to this old post in Emily Magazine that pretty much sums it up:
When people at parties ask me what I do I think I am just going to start saying that I’m an “emailer.”
It’s both sad and true.
Is Technology Overwhelming Society?
http://bigthink.com/ideas/39149
What’s the Latest Development?
Researchers at Cambridge University’s Engineering Design Centre asked 63 families from around the world to keep a weekly diary of their hour-by-hour use of communication technology. The results of the survey found that, "38 per cent of 10-14 year olds felt that too much [technology] could be upsetting; 34 per cent of 25-34 reported feeling similarly. Young people, however, did not say that they favored digital communication over face-to-face. While 65 per cent of adults said they preferred communicating in person, the same was also true for 64 per cent of children."
What’s the Big Idea?
A larger conclusion made by the researchers is that modern communication technology, no matter how omnipresent, is neither inherently good nor bad. Instead, it is up to us to decide whether it plays a positive or negative role in our lives. "Those people who felt overwhelmed by new technology were also more likely to feel unsatisfied in other areas of their lives. Individuals who retained control over new technology generally felt happier." Families and individuals who better understood their own use of technology were more likely to have a positive relationship with it.
