6 ms·

The Great Offline

99 points by axiomdata316 5y ago

disadvantage 5y ago
> Now, it is a remedy to the abstract category of technology — screen light and digital noise Well, I have a blue light filter screen protector, wear blue light filtering glasses, and have the blue light filter turned on in iOS & Android. As for 'digital noise', I train my feeds to be high signal, and rarely do mindless scrolling, but prefer mindful scrolling instead.
waylandsmithers 5y ago
> “Screen-Free Week,” for example — which invites participants to put down “entertainment screens” for seven days in May — was formerly called “TV Turnoff Week,” and was initially championed by an organization called TV-Free America. I had to miss the second to last ever episode of Seinfeld because my school participated in this and I'm still furious about it
unkulunkulu 5y ago
Offline is different than online, or maybe they’re the same. I like having different experiences anyway so I don’t care. I cannot change the world I can only choose. Nice words but why?
csbartus 5y ago
What a great design!! We need more! That would make the web a better place.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Mostly just a blank page for me before using archive.is, doesn't seem so great.
have_faith 5y ago
That was very difficult to read for some reason. The author quotes a lot of other peoples definitions of wilderness, online, offline, digit escapism, etc, but I’m struggling to understand the authors intentions. Does she recommend that I not view excessive time spent online as negative or escaping to spaces that remove it as positive? Should I view my own preferences for the outdoors as an extension of my white-male-ness instead of a pursuit of individual happiness?
- sulam 5y ago
  The article is saying that offline/online is like wilderness/civilization — a classification that stratifies experiences and the their availability along moral lines as opposed to pragmatic choices. She also makes the point that it divides along individualistic vs communal lines of thinking, where being alone is equated with being ‘pure’. For instance, the comment about not wanting to have to choose between being connected to social media and feeling bad vs not being connected but feeling better is a clear reference to the influence of apps like Facebook and Instagram, where research has shown that people tend to feel worse after using them (I’m probably over-simplifying here). If you think in terms of online as “spoiled” and offline as “unspoiled”, it makes you less likely to imagine that online experiences can be improved. I’ll also give a personal example. I love to go backpacking and I have been able to take my children with me on my last few trips. My oldest wanted to bring a Kindle, which I was fine with. Some people gave me grief about it because I was letting them bring a “screen” on a backpacking trip. This seems weird to me - within a backpacking context a Kindle is lighter and more useful than a book in almost every way (can’t be used as tinder in an emergency but that’s about the only disadvantage). If you’re not willing to bring technology into backpacking because it somehow “spoils” things, then I would like to draw your attention to all those high priced synthetic fiber clothing, dehydrated foods, and the plastic, aluminum and carbon fiber structural components that people happily use to improve their trip. My Garmin InReach does not spoil the trip for me because I can communicate with my wife, it makes it safer and more pleasant for my kids.
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    > can’t be used as tinder in an emergency but that’s about the only disadvantage If the battery's charged, it's better than tinder! Although you'd only get one try.
  - stevesearer 5y ago
    I preemptively mourn that at some point people will be able to text, stream shows, and have video calls from even the deepest wilderness areas. It is great that there are official wilderness areas that are off limits to technology such are drones and even bicycles. I kind of wish there was a way to digitally fence those areas off to some degree as well though as a fellow inReach user I know how useful some tech can be.
jaqalopes 5y ago
I'm a person who's very interested in "offline" and so was biased against this at the start, finding the main analysis that the concepts of wilderness and offline are "enmeshed" very undergrad. However I think the author brings it around to an interesting place, eg: True disconnection, like true wilderness, is an empty goal. Whether we have shunned social media or not, the internet does not cease to exist as a driving force in the world, any more than ecological systems cease to shape our lives the minute we reach the end of the forest trail and hop back in the car. I appreciate what the author is trying to do here and I agree that the idea of getting "all the way" offline is kind of silly, as though if I stopped reading books that would put an end to literature. However I think there is still something quite useful about the concepts of both wilderness and offline that the author downplays, namely that wild-ness and online-ness are spectrums. Wilderness isn't just a place with fewer people, it's a place that instead contains more of the things you can't get in, say, Manhattan, like bears and woodpeckers and natural springs and exceptionally fresh air. Just so, there is something about offline that isn't just the absence of electronics, but the feeling of quiet and human solitude that online necessarily destroys. Personally, I see no reason why the argument "most people are online and the world economy is inextricably digital" means that I can't personally log off. To the contrary, I think I appreciate being offline more now that I've spent years living online. Just so, I think I appreciate the beauty of nature and the ecosystems that ultimately sustain us more after having lived most of my live in giant cities.
Veen 5y ago
Somewhat interestingly, this publication is sponsored by Snap, Inc. (The company behind Snapchat).
- natestemen 5y ago
  Just to clarify, from their about page (https://reallifemag.com/about-real-life/ https://reallifemag.com/about-real-life/) they have the following > Three years ago, Snapchat offered to support the work I do as a sociologist, primarily applying social theory to social media. In these past three years, the company has also paid for the venue for a conference I co-founded and chair called Theorizing the Web, without asking for any editorial input or control. Snapchat is now funding Real Life, and we have editorial independence as well. The support means we can focus on writers and writing rather than clicks and shares. At the same time, there are inherent complexities attached to being funded by a company in the field of what we’re publishing about, sometimes critically. But the content will have to speak for itself. We believe in this project, and we’re doing this because we think and care about the things you’ll see discussed on the site: identity, power, privacy, surveillance, relationships, beauty, to name a few.
dash2 5y ago
So here is a particularly unhelpful argument pattern. > Today’s experience of childhood, they wrote, was an “inner, solitary” affair, plagued by the proliferation of “obesity, anti-social behavior, friendlessness and fear.” where "they" means a bunch of authors who wrote an open letter about modern childhood. Then there follows a large amount of stuff about what these metaphors mean, how they relate to previous bits of the history ideas, etc. The Noble Savage makes a predictable appearance. But there is absolutely zero engagement with the authors' actual argument! Like, are kids getting fatter or not? Are kids suffering more from antisocial behaviour or not? Friendlessness? Fear? These are real factual questions, not tropes in some novel. In other words, this piece engages with vocabulary and metaphors, as a substitute for engaging with the argument. Not, in general, a good trade. I see this style of argument a lot in work derived from the humanities. I think it very rarely adds light to any debate. Perhaps it needs a name, so it can be pointed out, and when appropriate, mocked.
- ssivark 5y ago
  Great observation. I personally find such indirection extremely frustrating. I propose “aboutism” as a name — since such articles end up talking “about” things, rather than addressing them directly.
- meiji163 5y ago
  This article is a great example of what I'd call "mindless problematization" From what I've seen, this is you're trained to do in modern humanities departments. Take any seemingly obvious claim and "problematize" it. It's telling that they do not say "nuance" it, rather it has to be made a _problem_. e.g. if you think "wilderness" is a thing you subscribe to a racist idea for "white male elites", if you think social media is affecting childhood development you're just caught up in the religious fervor of "scientized version of the biblical story of the Fall". A whole lot of BS gets written this way, because these arguments have the superficial air of being subversive and contrarian.
  - ad-astra 5y ago
    In some cases it reminds me of my fundamentalist religious upbringing where everything was “of the world” and even trivial things like Pokémon, Christmas Trees, and Teletubbies were viewed as problematic and sinister
forgotmypw17 5y ago
For the noJS and text-mode crowd: https://archive.md/bH0bn https://archive.md/bH0bn
- hidden-spyder 5y ago
  It's no-JS but gives me a Google Captcha?
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    Thanks for the heads-up, I didn't know that was a thing at archive.md :(
JohnWhigham 5y ago
In early 2015, Twitter discovered that the Oxford Junior Dictionary had culled dozens of words associated with the natural environment. The new edition of the dictionary — which cut terms like “acorn,”“buttercup,” and “kingfisher” in favor of adding “21st-century” terms like “broadband,” “voicemail,” “blog,” and “cut and paste” Why the fuck would a dictionary remove those?? This makes no sense.
- pm215 5y ago
  Because, as with all dictionaries except the absolutely massive complete editions, you can only put in so many words (this particular volume has 6,000 entries and is aimed at 7-8 year olds). In a related Guardian article somebody from the OUP says the selection criteria are: "acknowledging the current frequency of words in daily language of children of that age; corpus analysis; acknowledging commonly misspelled or misused words; and taking curriculum requirements into account". That is, times change and the things children are writing and reading about also change; dictionaries tend to follow, not lead.
hwers 5y ago
Look at the scrolling on that site. What a beauty. No intercom chat robot popping up, no distracting ads, no pop up asking you to fill in your mail for yet another newsletter you won't engage with. Wonderful to see.
LamdbaMamba 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand the point or argument of this article at all. It reminds me of the sort of essays I would write in English class, pouring words on a page hoping that it would sound profound enough to impress my teacher. Besides, it's not like I have a responsibility to act in a way that's best for society at large. Sure, by 'logging off' and trying to spend some time offline perhaps I am distracting myself from a broad social goal of trying to find a way to make the 'online' world one that makes us happier as opposed to periods of binge and detox. But I know that spending time offline makes me much happier, and it's a way I can learn how to manage my personal online experiences in a way that will make me happier still. That's not wrong, the same way living in a city but spending some time hiking in the 'wilderness' is not wrong.
dwabyick 5y ago
I wish this article acknowledged the problems with connection earlier on. Clearly the author can focus and reflect online, but many (often) cannot. I like the idea of improving how we spend our online time, but the reality is disconnection is also really beneficial. Time in nature is beneficial. Real-world contact is beneficial, and that is becoming more difficult for many to achieve.
mro_name 5y ago
comes with a bit of irony that you need 2 more cloud providers to actually get more than a white page. Has a neat offline appeal though. But offline and wilderness strongly resonate with me. Even more so, when it comes to children. It's a bliss to not have to deal with complexity.

99 points by axiomdata316 5y ago

> Now, it is a remedy to the abstract category of technology — screen light and digital noise Well, I have a blue light filter screen protector, wear blue light filtering glasses, and have the blue light filter turned on in iOS & Android. As for 'digital noise', I train my feeds to be high signal, and rarely do mindless scrolling, but prefer mindful scrolling instead.

waylandsmithers 5y ago

> “Screen-Free Week,” for example — which invites participants to put down “entertainment screens” for seven days in May — was formerly called “TV Turnoff Week,” and was initially championed by an organization called TV-Free America. I had to miss the second to last ever episode of Seinfeld because my school participated in this and I'm still furious about it

unkulunkulu 5y ago

Offline is different than online, or maybe they’re the same. I like having different experiences anyway so I don’t care. I cannot change the world I can only choose. Nice words but why?

csbartus 5y ago

What a great design!! We need more! That would make the web a better place.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Mostly just a blank page for me before using archive.is, doesn't seem so great.

have_faith 5y ago

That was very difficult to read for some reason. The author quotes a lot of other peoples definitions of wilderness, online, offline, digit escapism, etc, but I’m struggling to understand the authors intentions. Does she recommend that I not view excessive time spent online as negative or escaping to spaces that remove it as positive? Should I view my own preferences for the outdoors as an extension of my white-male-ness instead of a pursuit of individual happiness?

sulam 5y ago
The article is saying that offline/online is like wilderness/civilization — a classification that stratifies experiences and the their availability along moral lines as opposed to pragmatic choices. She also makes the point that it divides along individualistic vs communal lines of thinking, where being alone is equated with being ‘pure’. For instance, the comment about not wanting to have to choose between being connected to social media and feeling bad vs not being connected but feeling better is a clear reference to the influence of apps like Facebook and Instagram, where research has shown that people tend to feel worse after using them (I’m probably over-simplifying here). If you think in terms of online as “spoiled” and offline as “unspoiled”, it makes you less likely to imagine that online experiences can be improved. I’ll also give a personal example. I love to go backpacking and I have been able to take my children with me on my last few trips. My oldest wanted to bring a Kindle, which I was fine with. Some people gave me grief about it because I was letting them bring a “screen” on a backpacking trip. This seems weird to me - within a backpacking context a Kindle is lighter and more useful than a book in almost every way (can’t be used as tinder in an emergency but that’s about the only disadvantage). If you’re not willing to bring technology into backpacking because it somehow “spoils” things, then I would like to draw your attention to all those high priced synthetic fiber clothing, dehydrated foods, and the plastic, aluminum and carbon fiber structural components that people happily use to improve their trip. My Garmin InReach does not spoil the trip for me because I can communicate with my wife, it makes it safer and more pleasant for my kids.
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  > can’t be used as tinder in an emergency but that’s about the only disadvantage If the battery's charged, it's better than tinder! Although you'd only get one try.
- stevesearer 5y ago
  I preemptively mourn that at some point people will be able to text, stream shows, and have video calls from even the deepest wilderness areas. It is great that there are official wilderness areas that are off limits to technology such are drones and even bicycles. I kind of wish there was a way to digitally fence those areas off to some degree as well though as a fellow inReach user I know how useful some tech can be.

jaqalopes 5y ago

I'm a person who's very interested in "offline" and so was biased against this at the start, finding the main analysis that the concepts of wilderness and offline are "enmeshed" very undergrad. However I think the author brings it around to an interesting place, eg: True disconnection, like true wilderness, is an empty goal. Whether we have shunned social media or not, the internet does not cease to exist as a driving force in the world, any more than ecological systems cease to shape our lives the minute we reach the end of the forest trail and hop back in the car. I appreciate what the author is trying to do here and I agree that the idea of getting "all the way" offline is kind of silly, as though if I stopped reading books that would put an end to literature. However I think there is still something quite useful about the concepts of both wilderness and offline that the author downplays, namely that wild-ness and online-ness are spectrums. Wilderness isn't just a place with fewer people, it's a place that instead contains more of the things you can't get in, say, Manhattan, like bears and woodpeckers and natural springs and exceptionally fresh air. Just so, there is something about offline that isn't just the absence of electronics, but the feeling of quiet and human solitude that online necessarily destroys. Personally, I see no reason why the argument "most people are online and the world economy is inextricably digital" means that I can't personally log off. To the contrary, I think I appreciate being offline more now that I've spent years living online. Just so, I think I appreciate the beauty of nature and the ecosystems that ultimately sustain us more after having lived most of my live in giant cities.

Veen 5y ago

Somewhat interestingly, this publication is sponsored by Snap, Inc. (The company behind Snapchat).

natestemen 5y ago
Just to clarify, from their about page (https://reallifemag.com/about-real-life/ https://reallifemag.com/about-real-life/) they have the following > Three years ago, Snapchat offered to support the work I do as a sociologist, primarily applying social theory to social media. In these past three years, the company has also paid for the venue for a conference I co-founded and chair called Theorizing the Web, without asking for any editorial input or control. Snapchat is now funding Real Life, and we have editorial independence as well. The support means we can focus on writers and writing rather than clicks and shares. At the same time, there are inherent complexities attached to being funded by a company in the field of what we’re publishing about, sometimes critically. But the content will have to speak for itself. We believe in this project, and we’re doing this because we think and care about the things you’ll see discussed on the site: identity, power, privacy, surveillance, relationships, beauty, to name a few.

dash2 5y ago

So here is a particularly unhelpful argument pattern. > Today’s experience of childhood, they wrote, was an “inner, solitary” affair, plagued by the proliferation of “obesity, anti-social behavior, friendlessness and fear.” where "they" means a bunch of authors who wrote an open letter about modern childhood. Then there follows a large amount of stuff about what these metaphors mean, how they relate to previous bits of the history ideas, etc. The Noble Savage makes a predictable appearance. But there is absolutely zero engagement with the authors' actual argument! Like, are kids getting fatter or not? Are kids suffering more from antisocial behaviour or not? Friendlessness? Fear? These are real factual questions, not tropes in some novel. In other words, this piece engages with vocabulary and metaphors, as a substitute for engaging with the argument. Not, in general, a good trade. I see this style of argument a lot in work derived from the humanities. I think it very rarely adds light to any debate. Perhaps it needs a name, so it can be pointed out, and when appropriate, mocked.

ssivark 5y ago
Great observation. I personally find such indirection extremely frustrating. I propose “aboutism” as a name — since such articles end up talking “about” things, rather than addressing them directly.
meiji163 5y ago
This article is a great example of what I'd call "mindless problematization" From what I've seen, this is you're trained to do in modern humanities departments. Take any seemingly obvious claim and "problematize" it. It's telling that they do not say "nuance" it, rather it has to be made a _problem_. e.g. if you think "wilderness" is a thing you subscribe to a racist idea for "white male elites", if you think social media is affecting childhood development you're just caught up in the religious fervor of "scientized version of the biblical story of the Fall". A whole lot of BS gets written this way, because these arguments have the superficial air of being subversive and contrarian.
- ad-astra 5y ago
  In some cases it reminds me of my fundamentalist religious upbringing where everything was “of the world” and even trivial things like Pokémon, Christmas Trees, and Teletubbies were viewed as problematic and sinister

forgotmypw17 5y ago

For the noJS and text-mode crowd: https://archive.md/bH0bn https://archive.md/bH0bn

hidden-spyder 5y ago
It's no-JS but gives me a Google Captcha?
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Thanks for the heads-up, I didn't know that was a thing at archive.md :(

JohnWhigham 5y ago

In early 2015, Twitter discovered that the Oxford Junior Dictionary had culled dozens of words associated with the natural environment. The new edition of the dictionary — which cut terms like “acorn,”“buttercup,” and “kingfisher” in favor of adding “21st-century” terms like “broadband,” “voicemail,” “blog,” and “cut and paste” Why the fuck would a dictionary remove those?? This makes no sense.

pm215 5y ago
Because, as with all dictionaries except the absolutely massive complete editions, you can only put in so many words (this particular volume has 6,000 entries and is aimed at 7-8 year olds). In a related Guardian article somebody from the OUP says the selection criteria are: "acknowledging the current frequency of words in daily language of children of that age; corpus analysis; acknowledging commonly misspelled or misused words; and taking curriculum requirements into account". That is, times change and the things children are writing and reading about also change; dictionaries tend to follow, not lead.

hwers 5y ago

Look at the scrolling on that site. What a beauty. No intercom chat robot popping up, no distracting ads, no pop up asking you to fill in your mail for yet another newsletter you won't engage with. Wonderful to see.

LamdbaMamba 5y ago

I'm not sure I understand the point or argument of this article at all. It reminds me of the sort of essays I would write in English class, pouring words on a page hoping that it would sound profound enough to impress my teacher. Besides, it's not like I have a responsibility to act in a way that's best for society at large. Sure, by 'logging off' and trying to spend some time offline perhaps I am distracting myself from a broad social goal of trying to find a way to make the 'online' world one that makes us happier as opposed to periods of binge and detox. But I know that spending time offline makes me much happier, and it's a way I can learn how to manage my personal online experiences in a way that will make me happier still. That's not wrong, the same way living in a city but spending some time hiking in the 'wilderness' is not wrong.

dwabyick 5y ago

I wish this article acknowledged the problems with connection earlier on. Clearly the author can focus and reflect online, but many (often) cannot. I like the idea of improving how we spend our online time, but the reality is disconnection is also really beneficial. Time in nature is beneficial. Real-world contact is beneficial, and that is becoming more difficult for many to achieve.

mro_name 5y ago

comes with a bit of irony that you need 2 more cloud providers to actually get more than a white page. Has a neat offline appeal though. But offline and wilderness strongly resonate with me. Even more so, when it comes to children. It's a bliss to not have to deal with complexity.