{ unplug } Why we should take a holiday from our networks

{ by } Aleks Krotoski

{ source } The Observer, 2011.05.29

{ topics } unplugging, holiday, multi-tasking, boredom,
pleasure principle, conditioning , digital hermit, internet addicts,

conspicuous consumption, re-hab, de-tox, relaxation 

The web has been described by anthropologists as the modern water cooler, and it is increasingly where we hang out. So we head to our technologies in order to be part of the party.

A digital break will do you good. Switch off and try it.

It's the Sabbath, and I do hope you're reading the dead tree version of this column. After all, it's a long weekend, and isn't it time you had a holiday from the web? Even the ultimate how-to guides to life, the doctrines of the major world religions, recommend at least one day off a week. And by off, they mean nothing, nada, zilch. Not a peep. Not even a tweet. And don't even think about touching your BlackBerry.

Yet so many of us – myself included – have an incredibly hard time letting go of our devices. What is it that compels us to maintain our vice-like grips on our digital realities?

The web has made it feel impossible not to be connected all the time simply because it connects us. As social creatures, we are keen to belong, and we perform our belonging – online and offline – by reaching out and touching someone. One of the important ways we demonstrate connection is by sharing information with one another, deepening our relationships and making them more enduring. The web has been described by anthropologists as the modern water cooler, and it is increasingly where we hang out. So we head to our technologies in order to be part of the party.

It's a mistake to assume that your friendships will suffer if you take a break from conversing online.
Photograph: Westend61 GmbH/Alamy

{ unplug } DTAC "Disconnect to connect" TV commercial

{ by } Oeil S Jumratsilpa

{ source } Oeil SJ, 2010.10.12

{ topics } unplugging, disconnecting,
turning off, mobile phones

The brand DTAC has always had a friendly and easy-going personality. This TV commercial doesn’t forget the unmistakable personality even when criticizing the society and its current issue.

DTAC is the second largest phone company in Thailand and is owned by a Norwegian phone company called Telenor. Thailand is known to have its own way of appreciating and responding to advertising and branding. Telenor, being a foreign company, made a good choice when they decided not to brand DTAC as a Norwegian company but instead did a good research on the style of branding and advertisement Thais respond well to.

The brand DTAC has always had a friendly and easy-going personality. This TV commercial doesn’t forget the unmistakable personality even when criticizing the society and its current issue.

{ unplug } What Happens When Mom Unplugs Teens for 6 Months?

{ by } Vicki Panaccione
{ source } Ezine Articles, 2011.02.16

{ topics } unplugging, rediscovering,
hobbies, focusing, relationships

Unplugging really can have a remarkable effect on the whole family. And after a while, they don't seem to miss the electronics. Aren't willing to unplug for the long haul? Then here are some suggestions for adding unplugging into your regular routine.

There isn't a parent I meet nowadays who doesn't complain about the amount of time his or her children spend using electronics. These range from electronic hand held games, to iPods, to cell phones, Internet and TV. Just imagine what your life would be like if your children were unplugged!

Well, that's exactly what Susan Maushart did! { see previous article: 'I took my kids offline' } A NY mother of 3 teenagers (ages 14, 15 and 18) decided she'd had enough. Like so many teens, they did their homework while simultaneously listening to music, updating Facebook and checking text messages. Instead of laughing when amused, they actually said "LOL" aloud. Her daughters had become mere "accessories of their own social-networking profile, as if real life was simply a dress rehearsal (or more accurately, a photo op) for the next status update." So, for six month she took away the Internet, TV, video games, all electronic hand held games, iPods and cell phones.

{ unplug } Three powerful lessons I learned when I got offline

{ by } Tony Schwartz
{ source } Harvard Business Review Blog Network, 2012.01.04

{ topics } unplugging, time management, life balance,
curiosity, search, instant gratification, distraction

As the days passed, the biggest loss I experienced was that I couldn't instantly search Google for more information about something each time the thought occurred to me. I'd always told myself I did that only out of a desire to know more and go deeper.

I hadn't been offline for more than a few hours in two and a half years — and only then because I was on safari in Botswana and had no choice.

Typically, the first thing I would do when I got up in the morning was to get on my laptop to check a series of sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, and HBR.org, to see what comments my blogs had accumulated overnight.

All day long, between doing my main work, I found myself checking one site or another, or reading and responding to email. Far too often, I got right back online after dinner. The lure of email and the Internet had come to feel compulsive, irresistible, and increasingly uncomfortable.

On the evening of December 24th, I decided to see if I could shut it all down for nine days, cold turkey. To my surprise, it wasn't that hard.

'Unplug / Holiday' by HOW / Parse

{ unplug } Is it time for your Digital Diet?

{ by } Daniel Sieberg

{ source } The Telegraph, 2012.01.05

{ topics } unplugging, disconnecting, reconnecting,
four-step 'digital diet’, fast, digital life, digital intake

The diet is about seeing your technology in a whole new light. Loving it again, not wanting to put it in a blender. Going on a digital diet is also about reconnecting with people. It’s not a “digital fast”, it’s about indulging in a healthy manner. No one is forcing you to become so overloaded and overwhelmed.

Daniel Sieberg argues that many of us allow gadgets to dominate our lives - here's how to make them work for you.

A friend told me recently that her five-year-old son was suffering night terrors. One night, she went into his room to comfort him, patting his head and soothing with gentle words. In his sleep, her son said: “Mummy, mummy, put your BlackBerry down. Put your BlackBerry down.”

If that’s not a wake-up call for all of us then I don’t know what is. Let’s hit the virtual pause button for a minute and consider what our digital lives have become.

Many of us now spend our days with our head in the high-tech “clouds.” We text and drive like it’s a matter of life and death, which, I’m sorry to report, it is. And then there’s that nagging voice telling us that despite our unprecedented connectedness, we sometimes feel more overwhelmed and, ironically, disconnected, than ever before.

While it’s easy to blame technology for taking us away from the people and things we love, in truth we’re often our own worst enemy.

{ unplug } 'I took my kids offline'

{ by } Susan Maushart
{ source } The Guardian, 2011.01.01 

{ topics } unplugging, family, teenagers, boredom,
social outcasts, creativity, comfort zone, multitasking

Over a period of months, Maushart, a single mother, had a "dawning awareness" that something was not right. But when she watched Sussy receive video clips of her friends streamed live over the internet, her worries became "profound panic"."My concern," she says, "was that we had ceased to function as a family.

When Susan Maushart imposed a six-month ban on technology in her home, she expected the children to rebel. But they embraced the experiment – and even claim to have enjoyed it.

'It's weird when you have to text your kids to come to the dinner table," says Susan Maushart. At the end of 2008, she was anxious about the amount of time her three teenagers spent transfixed by technology.

All she usually saw of her 15-year-old son, Bill, was the back of his head as he played on his games console. Her elder daughter, Anni, 18, binged on social-networking sites and 14-year-old Sussy seemed physically attached to her laptop, often staying logged on to the internet through the night. Over a period of months, Maushart, a single mother, had a "dawning awareness" that something was not right. But when she watched Sussy receive video clips of her friends streamed live over the internet, her worries became "profound panic".

"My concern," she says, "was that we had ceased to function as a family. We were just a collection of individuals who were very connected outwards – to friends, business, school and sources of entertainment and information. But we simply weren't connecting with one another in real space and time in any sort of authentic way."

Susan Maushart with Bill, Sussy and Anni. Photograph: Richard Hatherly/Newspix

{ unplug } The Joy of Quiet

{ by } Pico Iyer
{ source } The New York Times, 2011.12.29
{ topics } unplugging, addiction, life balance

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.

About a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness.

A few months later, I read an interview with the perennially cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? “I never read any magazines or watch TV,” he said, perhaps a little hyperbolically. “Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.” He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”

Around the same time, I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.

Has it really come to this?

Zen Garden, Komyozenji Temple (Dazaifu near Fukuoka, Japan)