8 ms·

A Life Offline

130 points by imgabe 18y ago

staunch 18y ago
I think being in a city you're still pretty far from disconnected. I go camping for a week in the deep wilderness with no electronics. Feels amazing.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  Yes. My wife and I went camping in the Mojave desert a couple of years ago, where we were isolated enough that we actually had to worry about having enough petrol to get to the next gas station some times. I can thoroughly recommend it. Although I do love startup life, I'm very much looking forward to having the freedom to do this again one day.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    I do the same - but canoe into Algonquin Park. You can't bring much when you have to be able to portage all your gear and don't want to make 2 trips. It is really great getting away from it all and enjoying the slow life without SMS and RSS.
- yan 18y ago
  If I may ask, where?
  - staunch 18y ago
    Near Lake Tahoe or Big Bear most of the time. Usually mountains though. I just drive around until I find a place that seems remote. I leave the car parked near the road (hidden if possible) and hike out until I find a place I like to setup the tent.
- davidw 18y ago
  For shorter getaways, bike riding is great. I went out for 5 hours yesterday, and rode around the 'Colli Berici', enjoying myself thoroughly (Italy in the spring is that gorgeous). It's a nice way to get away from other people for a bit, too, without having to actually go deep into the woods, although you can do that too with a mountain bike.
- jmatt 18y ago
  I agree. Personally my most rewarding wilderness adventures were Torres Del Paine, Chile and Denali National Park, Alaska. I think part of this is that even when I'm disconnecting and taking a break, I like to push myself. Make it interesting... It doesn't have to be just a relaxing week or weekend camping. After accomplishing a big goal (hiking, backpacking, climbing etc) it's rewarding and I promise you'll get your mind off your job. You'll come out of it reinvigorated. To all of you that haven't camped or backpacked before, there is only one way to learn. Start doing it.
kyro 18y ago
I often wonder about whether the constant connectivity with ubiquitous Twitter use and all is really a good thing, and whether we should just go out and play soccer and breathe the fresh air all day. I definitely find myself caught up in the craze at times, reading/commenting on HN included, and feel as if I'm missing out on a whole world of more rewarding experiences outside. Not to say I'm an antisocial person, I consider myself somewhat the opposite, but a lot of my life has definitely been used up in computer/internet time. Let's do an experiment and take HN offline for one month. It'd be interesting to see what happens.
- sfphotoarts 18y ago
  let's not impose our will on others, ok? You just not visit HN for a month and leave the rest of us that can handle the online world just fine...
  - zackattack 18y ago
    I don't really know whether I should even bother responding to this, because there's no way that 'pg' would shut down HN for a month based on kyro's philosophical musings. And for taking kyro's comment as a threat, you ought be downvoted. Besides, there's noprocrast. However, if kyro is serious, then he really should take a monthlong retreat away from HN, crank up the soccer-times lifestyle, and get away from it all. I will say this: I've spent a lot of time both online and in the social world. And I don't know how to properly answer kyro's lifestyle query.
    - paulgb 18y ago
      A month is a bit extreme, but I do remember pg posting a poll in all serious asking if he should shut down HN for an hour each day. A personal month long retreat from HN does sound tempting though.
  - kyro 18y ago
    My suggestion to take HN offline for a month should be taken the same way as when one says to his group of friends "hey, let's see what would happen if we went a week without pants."
sfphotoarts 18y ago
"I want to be human again. Even if that means isolating myself from the rest of you humans." That's a contradiction, humans are social animal and the rise of telecommunications and the internet is just the current technological advancement in that direction. Isolation is about as non-human as it gets. What this person sounds like is that they need some major therapy, not isolation from the real world. There's nothing wrong with paper and books, but they should be understood as the exact same concepts, in their time as email and the internet today.
- DLWormwood 18y ago
  > That's a contradiction, humans are social animal and the rise of telecommunications and the internet is just the current technological advancement in that direction. The whole notion of humans being "social animals" is a recent invention. (Even the notion of humans being just "animals" is about as young.) For most of human history, there has been an underlying impulse for humans to distance themselves from each other for periods of time. (Monasticism, colonization, and rural farming were the majority lifestyles until recently.) The only reason the contemplative lifestyle is being looked down upon nowadays is that we've simply run out of enough land to give everyone enough room to be so at the same time. Until we develop some means of overcoming the space distance barrier, we're stuck with each other.
  - soldarnal 18y ago
    I'm curious about what you mean by "recent". Aristotle considered man by nature a "political animal". Genesis states that "It is not good for man to be alone." To whom do you credit the idea that man is a "social animal"?
    - rincewind 18y ago
      Aristotle has thought of himself as a "political" being, but he perceived the world and the meaning of "political" in a very different way from me and you.
      - 18y ago
edw519 18y ago
Wow, I am a hacker on my computer 60-80 hours per week and my lifestyle is 179 degrees from yours. I have no land line and a cell phone, but it's not a smart phone. I carry it to work or out of town, but nowhere else. If I visit someone else, run an errand, or go out to eat, you'll have to leave me a voicemail. Sorry about that, but I devote my full attention to the people I'm with. I have a laptop, but it leaves my desk once or twice a year. If I'm on the road, I probably have a file folder full of papers and a thumb drive, but no electronics. I check email many times per day and I visit hn many times per day, but only when I'm already at a computer. I never IM, Facebook, Twitter, or text. If you want to communicate with me: if it's important, call me, if not, email me. Either way, I'll get to it when it's convenient for me, and I'll respond fairly quickly. I went out to dinner with a group including my 22 year old niece. She texted the entire time (under the table, but we all noticed). How sad, I thought. What was so important that she ignored the rest of us for an hour? I almost feel sorry for you, Aaron, but then again, I know better. I'm curious to see how the next month will affect your lifestyle afterwards. Hopefully, I'll be able to welcome you back to the real human race (by email, of course.)
- zackattack 18y ago
  It's a generation gap thing. Most people I know will text at the dinner table; it's socially acceptable among peers.
  - edw519 18y ago
    I'm understand, but I still don't understand. If you need to communicate a small amount of data in a fairly urgent manner, then texting makes perfect sense. But I just don't understand the constant texting and vibrating. How is it socially acceptable to prefer the company of those not there over those who are? If you'd rather be with someone else, go be with them. Otherwise, enjoy the company of those you're with. You'll see the others soon enough.
    - kyro 18y ago
      That's a pretty common misconception that older folk have. And you're simplifying the social connection framework to something it's not. It's not that cut and dry. I don't rank my friends on a gradient based on company preference. Every relationship is unique. And beyond that, we grew up with cellphones as the mobile information carriers in our pockets. To us, cellphones are a constant in all social situations, so we're accustomed to it.
randallsquared 18y ago
It’s like a constant stream of depression. A day without it made me feel like I was human again. I had the opposite reaction to a weekend without internet a few months ago: I felt lost and bored and didn't know what to do. After a while, when I got used to this feeling, it dawned on me that this was what I used to feel like all the time before the internet. In that light, it's no wonder I was unhappy and bored with only limited exceptions from the early 80s through the middle 90s (when I got a dialup connection).
- jlees 18y ago
  You didn't have books?
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    I did, and read voraciously, at a pace and with a scope that now seems incredible to me. However, even while reading, there's more than one thread of thought going on in your head, wondering about whether this historical figure in the book really did that thing, or whether you need to have that report in Tuesday morning or Thursday morning, or what this typeface is called and what its history is, and so on. Before the internet, I had to ignore most of these to get anything done, since I would have ended up spending a very large percentage of my time writing them down and researching them, and most of those thoughts just weren't worth it. Now, though, I can put the book down for a moment and look up most of these instantly, and then go back to the book. Or not, because often the new questions that arise from the answers to these, and their answers, are more interesting than the fiction novel I was reading -- and this is part of my point: that the internet has both vastly increased the number of things I can find out about and my total consumption of information, and has greatly increased my average interest in what I'm doing, since I can stop and do something more interesting (in my own time) at any time. Usually whatever novel or textbook I was reading in the 80s was so boring that I wouldn't bother with it at all now, but at the time it was just the most interesting thing I had, and all the immediate alternatives to "read this book" were even more boring. I didn't have a great childhood, in retrospect, but at the time it seemed that my major problem was boredom. I guess that's enough self-examination for one post. :)
mmc 18y ago
More than a (month of) life offline, this sounds like a life just off. If pressure and constant stimulation has you down, how exactly is ignoring your friends and the outside world going to help, I wonder?
frodwith 18y ago
I have wondered lately if living in the weird information landscape of modern communication isn't sucking the joy out of my life to some degree. I think next time I am unemployed, I'm going to take a few months and similarly pull the plug, just to see what it feels like.
mhp 18y ago
Self inflicted (essentially) solitary confinement: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...
- swolchok 18y ago
  The rest of us saw that post too.
Tichy 18y ago
Sounds like holidays.
Mintz 18y ago
I personally can't fathom giving up all the technological advances that we as a race are using to better ourselves and our lives. Isolating yourself can only help so much, but permanently shifting your lifestyle so that it's more comfortable will work better in the long run.
erlanger 18y ago
It must be one hell of a luxury to be able to make a decision like this one.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  Not making that decision might in fact prove to be the luxury.
- jon_dahl 18y ago
  Even a temporary sabbatical from technology? I don't think that's a luxury at all. If we wanted to, most of us could schedule our lives so that we got a month (or more) away every so often - away from work, from home, from technology, or whatever.
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    most of us could schedule our lives so that we got a month (or more) away every so often One of the recent polls here suggests something like two thirds of us are working on startups either full-time or part-time. Startups don't generally allow for taking a month off (a month is often enough time for the competition to catch up if you stop working).
    - yason 18y ago
      Anyone who's not an entrepreneur will have at least vacation. Then you can get totally offline if you want to, as you don't even have to use the computer/internet at work. Although I prefer just taking a few days off the computer at a time myself. Like a weekend, or not hacking anything in the evenings for a week or so. For me, the problem isn't being online per se but the balance of being online AND offline. When I'm offline, it will eventually energize me to get back online for a while. And when I'm online, it will do SO good to cut off the lines for a few days when I find myself only being online.
  - blhack 18y ago
    You're European, aren't you. Bastard.
adamsmith 18y ago
I would disconnect the laptop and Internet and keep a dumb phone. In my mind social is the opposite of computers and isolation, so trying to remove both is going to push in the wrong direction.
webology 18y ago
Interesting idea but most of us have jobs which require us to be on a computer and taking a month off isn't practical. Moderation maybe?
keefe 18y ago
heresy! All life outside of coding may be found in WoW... lol plus a few side trips up to haight... seriously though, I feel as a human I am an intellectual, emotional, physical being and it is essential to maintain development of all those aspects. Only a balanced life can lead to highly productive working hours.
chime 18y ago
Everything in moderation, including moderation. Every now and then I run across a story like this where someone is overburdened with communication and technology and wants to give it all up for a fixed time to cleanse themselves from the toxicity of modern life. Then they come back renewed, with new energy to conquer it all, and tell everyone how great it is and that everyone should give solitary confinement or meditation a serious attempt. Then a few months later, they get back into their old overloaded lifestyle of stress and constant work. No, you don't need to give it all up for a month or year to find yourself. This is reaching out to the other extreme because you hope to end up in the center eventually. How about just slowly moving to the center from where you are? Get rid of the email+text features from you cellphone. Billions of people live perfectly fine without it. Keep GPS/web on your phone but only use when needed. Feel free to check your email whenever you have a few minutes but don't reply to it immediately. Shape your routine so you get to do what's important and not just what's urgent. When not doing something productive or relaxing on the computer, step away. Go kayaking, hiking, camping, or jogging. Go to the movies, mall, museum, theater, art show, or a theme park. Get a backyard project, build something in real life, get your hands dirty. And while you do all of this, make adequate use of the technology available to you without feeling crushed under it. The purpose of technology is to solve real-life problems. It is not to replace real-life with a 24/7 stream of stress. People are good in general. Don't ignore them for a month because they contact you too much using different mediums. Spend more time with them in person, even if they annoy you. And use your knowledge of technology to enrich your and their lives. What good is 15 years of computer knowledge if you renounce it instead of sharing it with others? Connectivity is not bad. What is bad is not knowing what form of communication to give more value to. Figure out your communication medium hierarchy and live by it. Mine goes: Face-2-Face > Video chat > Phone > Email > Message boards > Social Networks My social goal is to take people from the lower end and move them towards higher end. So I may get a friend message me through Facebook, then we'll email, then phone, with the final goal to hang out next time one of us is in town. Without technology, none of this would be possible. I love technology, but only enough to enable me to improve my real-life social activities.
- michaelneale 18y ago
  This is similar to crash dieting or excercise binges - people don't bother to fit eating or excercising into their regular habits so they do "crashes" to try and feel better. But everything he said resonated with me.
nraynaud 18y ago
I'm addicted to tech too, and I'm planning to going to Germany by bike (1400km) in a few weeks, I think the bowl of real life will be good. And I'm seriously thinking in abandoning the development too. Actually I'm unemployed and I already refused interesting offers in development, the next step is finding another career, away from office and computer.
pistoriusp 18y ago
I've read all the posts here and I can't seem to get away from the feeling that it's all a bit "overly complicated?" I just don't see the point of categorising myself as a person who has, for example, a hierarchy for ranking social interactions or as a person who checks mail many times a day and doesn't go to the store with a mobile. Why is this important? Is it? I just can't see the importance. But maybe that's just me... When I was growing up I realised that I didn't know, or even care, for "how I wanted my eggs." It just didn't seem to matter in the grand scheme of things.
zandorg 18y ago
I got the point where I was checking Reddit every 5 minutes. I changed my ways: Now I'm reading a book a week, and Hacker News supplies all my news. As for email, I hardly get replies to anything these days, so screw 'em.
andresmh 18y ago
I recently experienced something similar after losing my smartphone I switched to a dumb one. I found myself not living just fine with my regular phone and not really needing any of the fancy features. It feels strange for a techie to go low-tech, but it's also liberating.
dimitar 18y ago
>I want to be human again. Even if that means isolating myself from the rest of you humans. Communication technology exists to help satisfy the innate human desire and <em>need</em> to communicate. So it isn't reasonable to become anti-social to be human "again". Moderation and maybe a more sophisticated approach (letters maybe, I liked that in the article) is what we need.
ruby_roo 18y ago
Good for Aaron! I don't understand the more critical comments here. He's obviously doing what he feels he needs to do to stay sane. Why so many judgmental statements? I think some of this may come from folks feeling a little guilty about their own technology addiction. Or maybe they're just feeling a little superior now that they've 'outlasted' Aaron Swartz. I donno. It's just weird that people would suddenly become so concerned with someone else's techno-fast, as if he's mentally off because he wants a break from it all. Not all of us can be moderate about everything all the time. Some of us need to take extreme and immediate action to break out of a downward spiral or perform some other life-affirming action. Sometimes we need friends to push us to do this. Seems perfectly healthy to me. And I don't understand the comparison people are making to crash diets here, as if living off the grid is somehow equivalent to cutting off the flow of essential nutrients. Come on.
metatronscube 18y ago
How does this guy make his living? Just wondering... I would simply call this a holiday, so why is this so ground breaking? I'm not trying to stir anything up by saying this..I just don't get why this is such a revelation.

130 points by imgabe 18y ago

I think being in a city you're still pretty far from disconnected. I go camping for a week in the deep wilderness with no electronics. Feels amazing.

abstractbill 18y ago
Yes. My wife and I went camping in the Mojave desert a couple of years ago, where we were isolated enough that we actually had to worry about having enough petrol to get to the next gas station some times. I can thoroughly recommend it. Although I do love startup life, I'm very much looking forward to having the freedom to do this again one day.
- mrtron 18y ago
  I do the same - but canoe into Algonquin Park. You can't bring much when you have to be able to portage all your gear and don't want to make 2 trips. It is really great getting away from it all and enjoying the slow life without SMS and RSS.
yan 18y ago
If I may ask, where?
- staunch 18y ago
  Near Lake Tahoe or Big Bear most of the time. Usually mountains though. I just drive around until I find a place that seems remote. I leave the car parked near the road (hidden if possible) and hike out until I find a place I like to setup the tent.
davidw 18y ago
For shorter getaways, bike riding is great. I went out for 5 hours yesterday, and rode around the 'Colli Berici', enjoying myself thoroughly (Italy in the spring is that gorgeous). It's a nice way to get away from other people for a bit, too, without having to actually go deep into the woods, although you can do that too with a mountain bike.
jmatt 18y ago
I agree. Personally my most rewarding wilderness adventures were Torres Del Paine, Chile and Denali National Park, Alaska. I think part of this is that even when I'm disconnecting and taking a break, I like to push myself. Make it interesting... It doesn't have to be just a relaxing week or weekend camping. After accomplishing a big goal (hiking, backpacking, climbing etc) it's rewarding and I promise you'll get your mind off your job. You'll come out of it reinvigorated. To all of you that haven't camped or backpacked before, there is only one way to learn. Start doing it.

kyro 18y ago

I often wonder about whether the constant connectivity with ubiquitous Twitter use and all is really a good thing, and whether we should just go out and play soccer and breathe the fresh air all day. I definitely find myself caught up in the craze at times, reading/commenting on HN included, and feel as if I'm missing out on a whole world of more rewarding experiences outside. Not to say I'm an antisocial person, I consider myself somewhat the opposite, but a lot of my life has definitely been used up in computer/internet time. Let's do an experiment and take HN offline for one month. It'd be interesting to see what happens.

sfphotoarts 18y ago
let's not impose our will on others, ok? You just not visit HN for a month and leave the rest of us that can handle the online world just fine...
- zackattack 18y ago
  I don't really know whether I should even bother responding to this, because there's no way that 'pg' would shut down HN for a month based on kyro's philosophical musings. And for taking kyro's comment as a threat, you ought be downvoted. Besides, there's noprocrast. However, if kyro is serious, then he really should take a monthlong retreat away from HN, crank up the soccer-times lifestyle, and get away from it all. I will say this: I've spent a lot of time both online and in the social world. And I don't know how to properly answer kyro's lifestyle query.
  - paulgb 18y ago
    A month is a bit extreme, but I do remember pg posting a poll in all serious asking if he should shut down HN for an hour each day. A personal month long retreat from HN does sound tempting though.
- kyro 18y ago
  My suggestion to take HN offline for a month should be taken the same way as when one says to his group of friends "hey, let's see what would happen if we went a week without pants."

sfphotoarts 18y ago

"I want to be human again. Even if that means isolating myself from the rest of you humans." That's a contradiction, humans are social animal and the rise of telecommunications and the internet is just the current technological advancement in that direction. Isolation is about as non-human as it gets. What this person sounds like is that they need some major therapy, not isolation from the real world. There's nothing wrong with paper and books, but they should be understood as the exact same concepts, in their time as email and the internet today.

DLWormwood 18y ago
> That's a contradiction, humans are social animal and the rise of telecommunications and the internet is just the current technological advancement in that direction. The whole notion of humans being "social animals" is a recent invention. (Even the notion of humans being just "animals" is about as young.) For most of human history, there has been an underlying impulse for humans to distance themselves from each other for periods of time. (Monasticism, colonization, and rural farming were the majority lifestyles until recently.) The only reason the contemplative lifestyle is being looked down upon nowadays is that we've simply run out of enough land to give everyone enough room to be so at the same time. Until we develop some means of overcoming the space distance barrier, we're stuck with each other.
- soldarnal 18y ago
  I'm curious about what you mean by "recent". Aristotle considered man by nature a "political animal". Genesis states that "It is not good for man to be alone." To whom do you credit the idea that man is a "social animal"?
  - rincewind 18y ago
    Aristotle has thought of himself as a "political" being, but he perceived the world and the meaning of "political" in a very different way from me and you.
    - 18y ago

edw519 18y ago

Wow, I am a hacker on my computer 60-80 hours per week and my lifestyle is 179 degrees from yours. I have no land line and a cell phone, but it's not a smart phone. I carry it to work or out of town, but nowhere else. If I visit someone else, run an errand, or go out to eat, you'll have to leave me a voicemail. Sorry about that, but I devote my full attention to the people I'm with. I have a laptop, but it leaves my desk once or twice a year. If I'm on the road, I probably have a file folder full of papers and a thumb drive, but no electronics. I check email many times per day and I visit hn many times per day, but only when I'm already at a computer. I never IM, Facebook, Twitter, or text. If you want to communicate with me: if it's important, call me, if not, email me. Either way, I'll get to it when it's convenient for me, and I'll respond fairly quickly. I went out to dinner with a group including my 22 year old niece. She texted the entire time (under the table, but we all noticed). How sad, I thought. What was so important that she ignored the rest of us for an hour? I almost feel sorry for you, Aaron, but then again, I know better. I'm curious to see how the next month will affect your lifestyle afterwards. Hopefully, I'll be able to welcome you back to the real human race (by email, of course.)

zackattack 18y ago
It's a generation gap thing. Most people I know will text at the dinner table; it's socially acceptable among peers.
- edw519 18y ago
  I'm understand, but I still don't understand. If you need to communicate a small amount of data in a fairly urgent manner, then texting makes perfect sense. But I just don't understand the constant texting and vibrating. How is it socially acceptable to prefer the company of those not there over those who are? If you'd rather be with someone else, go be with them. Otherwise, enjoy the company of those you're with. You'll see the others soon enough.
  - kyro 18y ago
    That's a pretty common misconception that older folk have. And you're simplifying the social connection framework to something it's not. It's not that cut and dry. I don't rank my friends on a gradient based on company preference. Every relationship is unique. And beyond that, we grew up with cellphones as the mobile information carriers in our pockets. To us, cellphones are a constant in all social situations, so we're accustomed to it.

randallsquared 18y ago

It’s like a constant stream of depression. A day without it made me feel like I was human again. I had the opposite reaction to a weekend without internet a few months ago: I felt lost and bored and didn't know what to do. After a while, when I got used to this feeling, it dawned on me that this was what I used to feel like all the time before the internet. In that light, it's no wonder I was unhappy and bored with only limited exceptions from the early 80s through the middle 90s (when I got a dialup connection).

jlees 18y ago
You didn't have books?
- randallsquared 18y ago
  I did, and read voraciously, at a pace and with a scope that now seems incredible to me. However, even while reading, there's more than one thread of thought going on in your head, wondering about whether this historical figure in the book really did that thing, or whether you need to have that report in Tuesday morning or Thursday morning, or what this typeface is called and what its history is, and so on. Before the internet, I had to ignore most of these to get anything done, since I would have ended up spending a very large percentage of my time writing them down and researching them, and most of those thoughts just weren't worth it. Now, though, I can put the book down for a moment and look up most of these instantly, and then go back to the book. Or not, because often the new questions that arise from the answers to these, and their answers, are more interesting than the fiction novel I was reading -- and this is part of my point: that the internet has both vastly increased the number of things I can find out about and my total consumption of information, and has greatly increased my average interest in what I'm doing, since I can stop and do something more interesting (in my own time) at any time. Usually whatever novel or textbook I was reading in the 80s was so boring that I wouldn't bother with it at all now, but at the time it was just the most interesting thing I had, and all the immediate alternatives to "read this book" were even more boring. I didn't have a great childhood, in retrospect, but at the time it seemed that my major problem was boredom. I guess that's enough self-examination for one post. :)

mmc 18y ago

More than a (month of) life offline, this sounds like a life just off. If pressure and constant stimulation has you down, how exactly is ignoring your friends and the outside world going to help, I wonder?

frodwith 18y ago

I have wondered lately if living in the weird information landscape of modern communication isn't sucking the joy out of my life to some degree. I think next time I am unemployed, I'm going to take a few months and similarly pull the plug, just to see what it feels like.

mhp 18y ago

Self inflicted (essentially) solitary confinement: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...

swolchok 18y ago
The rest of us saw that post too.

Tichy 18y ago

Sounds like holidays.

Mintz 18y ago

I personally can't fathom giving up all the technological advances that we as a race are using to better ourselves and our lives. Isolating yourself can only help so much, but permanently shifting your lifestyle so that it's more comfortable will work better in the long run.

erlanger 18y ago

It must be one hell of a luxury to be able to make a decision like this one.

Hexstream 18y ago
Not making that decision might in fact prove to be the luxury.
jon_dahl 18y ago
Even a temporary sabbatical from technology? I don't think that's a luxury at all. If we wanted to, most of us could schedule our lives so that we got a month (or more) away every so often - away from work, from home, from technology, or whatever.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  most of us could schedule our lives so that we got a month (or more) away every so often One of the recent polls here suggests something like two thirds of us are working on startups either full-time or part-time. Startups don't generally allow for taking a month off (a month is often enough time for the competition to catch up if you stop working).
  - yason 18y ago
    Anyone who's not an entrepreneur will have at least vacation. Then you can get totally offline if you want to, as you don't even have to use the computer/internet at work. Although I prefer just taking a few days off the computer at a time myself. Like a weekend, or not hacking anything in the evenings for a week or so. For me, the problem isn't being online per se but the balance of being online AND offline. When I'm offline, it will eventually energize me to get back online for a while. And when I'm online, it will do SO good to cut off the lines for a few days when I find myself only being online.
- blhack 18y ago
  You're European, aren't you. Bastard.

adamsmith 18y ago

I would disconnect the laptop and Internet and keep a dumb phone. In my mind social is the opposite of computers and isolation, so trying to remove both is going to push in the wrong direction.

webology 18y ago

Interesting idea but most of us have jobs which require us to be on a computer and taking a month off isn't practical. Moderation maybe?

keefe 18y ago

heresy! All life outside of coding may be found in WoW... lol plus a few side trips up to haight... seriously though, I feel as a human I am an intellectual, emotional, physical being and it is essential to maintain development of all those aspects. Only a balanced life can lead to highly productive working hours.

chime 18y ago

Everything in moderation, including moderation. Every now and then I run across a story like this where someone is overburdened with communication and technology and wants to give it all up for a fixed time to cleanse themselves from the toxicity of modern life. Then they come back renewed, with new energy to conquer it all, and tell everyone how great it is and that everyone should give solitary confinement or meditation a serious attempt. Then a few months later, they get back into their old overloaded lifestyle of stress and constant work. No, you don't need to give it all up for a month or year to find yourself. This is reaching out to the other extreme because you hope to end up in the center eventually. How about just slowly moving to the center from where you are? Get rid of the email+text features from you cellphone. Billions of people live perfectly fine without it. Keep GPS/web on your phone but only use when needed. Feel free to check your email whenever you have a few minutes but don't reply to it immediately. Shape your routine so you get to do what's important and not just what's urgent. When not doing something productive or relaxing on the computer, step away. Go kayaking, hiking, camping, or jogging. Go to the movies, mall, museum, theater, art show, or a theme park. Get a backyard project, build something in real life, get your hands dirty. And while you do all of this, make adequate use of the technology available to you without feeling crushed under it. The purpose of technology is to solve real-life problems. It is not to replace real-life with a 24/7 stream of stress. People are good in general. Don't ignore them for a month because they contact you too much using different mediums. Spend more time with them in person, even if they annoy you. And use your knowledge of technology to enrich your and their lives. What good is 15 years of computer knowledge if you renounce it instead of sharing it with others? Connectivity is not bad. What is bad is not knowing what form of communication to give more value to. Figure out your communication medium hierarchy and live by it. Mine goes: Face-2-Face > Video chat > Phone > Email > Message boards > Social Networks My social goal is to take people from the lower end and move them towards higher end. So I may get a friend message me through Facebook, then we'll email, then phone, with the final goal to hang out next time one of us is in town. Without technology, none of this would be possible. I love technology, but only enough to enable me to improve my real-life social activities.

michaelneale 18y ago
This is similar to crash dieting or excercise binges - people don't bother to fit eating or excercising into their regular habits so they do "crashes" to try and feel better. But everything he said resonated with me.

nraynaud 18y ago

I'm addicted to tech too, and I'm planning to going to Germany by bike (1400km) in a few weeks, I think the bowl of real life will be good. And I'm seriously thinking in abandoning the development too. Actually I'm unemployed and I already refused interesting offers in development, the next step is finding another career, away from office and computer.

pistoriusp 18y ago

I've read all the posts here and I can't seem to get away from the feeling that it's all a bit "overly complicated?" I just don't see the point of categorising myself as a person who has, for example, a hierarchy for ranking social interactions or as a person who checks mail many times a day and doesn't go to the store with a mobile. Why is this important? Is it? I just can't see the importance. But maybe that's just me... When I was growing up I realised that I didn't know, or even care, for "how I wanted my eggs." It just didn't seem to matter in the grand scheme of things.

zandorg 18y ago

I got the point where I was checking Reddit every 5 minutes. I changed my ways: Now I'm reading a book a week, and Hacker News supplies all my news. As for email, I hardly get replies to anything these days, so screw 'em.

andresmh 18y ago

I recently experienced something similar after losing my smartphone I switched to a dumb one. I found myself not living just fine with my regular phone and not really needing any of the fancy features. It feels strange for a techie to go low-tech, but it's also liberating.

dimitar 18y ago

>I want to be human again. Even if that means isolating myself from the rest of you humans. Communication technology exists to help satisfy the innate human desire and <em>need</em> to communicate. So it isn't reasonable to become anti-social to be human "again". Moderation and maybe a more sophisticated approach (letters maybe, I liked that in the article) is what we need.

ruby_roo 18y ago

Good for Aaron! I don't understand the more critical comments here. He's obviously doing what he feels he needs to do to stay sane. Why so many judgmental statements? I think some of this may come from folks feeling a little guilty about their own technology addiction. Or maybe they're just feeling a little superior now that they've 'outlasted' Aaron Swartz. I donno. It's just weird that people would suddenly become so concerned with someone else's techno-fast, as if he's mentally off because he wants a break from it all. Not all of us can be moderate about everything all the time. Some of us need to take extreme and immediate action to break out of a downward spiral or perform some other life-affirming action. Sometimes we need friends to push us to do this. Seems perfectly healthy to me. And I don't understand the comparison people are making to crash diets here, as if living off the grid is somehow equivalent to cutting off the flow of essential nutrients. Come on.

metatronscube 18y ago

How does this guy make his living? Just wondering... I would simply call this a holiday, so why is this so ground breaking? I'm not trying to stir anything up by saying this..I just don't get why this is such a revelation.