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 offli

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.