> moving your tech backwards doesn't move the world around you backwards. The OP point doesn't seem to be about moving anything backwards, but moving yourself

> moving your tech backwards doesn't move the world around you backwards. The OP point doesn't seem to be about moving anything backwards, but moving yourself forward by selectively disengaging from certain things. My PhD advisor once went to a beach resort with his family. Fifteen days in a remote venue without wifi nor cellphone network. He was the kind of person who replies a saturday midnight mail with an absurdly technical and detailed answer, within less than one hour. I thought it would be torture to him. When he came back he told me that it was the most productive two weeks on his life. He wrote two nearly complete paper drafts and proved several theorems. Some things that he couldn't check on the literature were carefully noted. After that he realised how absurd and unproductive it is to spend your whole life connected to the email and subject to excessive social pressure. I guess having email-free days, or even mornings, would be a productivity boost to many intellectual jobs (unless your job consists in actually replying to mails).