I didn't have a whole lot of faith in this assignment from the start.
It's not a matter of being unable to detach myself from the Internet for two days, it was a matter of how I'm a forgetful moron who has certain processes built into his brain. Getting dressed? Check the weather on my phone. Going shopping? Check Google Maps for directions. Friend has something amusing to send me? I gotta see, it'll brighten my day. It's ingrained in me, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
So when it's getting to be near 5 PM on Friday night, I'm hesitant, but I'll give it a shot. The condition I set myself was that I wasn't going to force it. If I slipped, that's it. So I got ready to go get something to eat, when I realized I could just place the order by phone, AND I still had time. I go back to my room, but I find another coupon I could use. After some thinking, I decide to check online to see if the coupon's any good. Then I saw it was 5:10.
Well, I'm out.
From there, I proceeded to go about my weekend as I usually do. And it was fantastic.
I kept in contact with someone who went home for the weekend. I got hours of easy to find entertainment for free. I was able to get to Hilldale without being horribly and hopelessly lost. I swapped ideas with a friend for my benefit and his. If I had gone offline this weekend, I would have missed the one of the single greatest interactions I've had with my friend since we met in seventh grade. Seriously, this was worth it for the events of Saturday afternoon alone (I am not at liberty to divulge, unfortunately).
But the main reason I was okay with this whole thing was because of the time frame of two days. Before you go saying that the Disconnected kids went weeks, that's the point. If I were doing this trial for weeks, it would feel like just that, a trial. A month is a trial full of learning experiences and enlightenment, two days is an annoyance. As strange as it sounds, I'd be more likely to try this if it were longer. Or not, it's hard to say.
So I don't regret forgoing this assignment for a minute. And I know that which 13 of you bailed as well, so don't get preachy on me.
4 comments:
Overall I agree with a lot of what you said. I really do feel that with the help of technology many new opportunities and connections are possible. While I understand that many people are addicted to their devices, the connections and and conversations that occur often help strengthen relationships that otherwise would be impossible.
I agree that 2 days is more annoying than it is good. However, I don't understand why you didn't try again after you failed. I failed, but I still didn't go online until after 5 on Sunday.
I usually use my phone to check the weather and so on, but it's fall in Wisconsin. It's generally cold and miserable weather.
I'm glad, though, that you got to talk to one of your friends. That is what I usually do on my weekends, so I was sad that I didn't get to do that.
I agree with Kaite. We may be distracted on technology, but the connections that we make with it is worth more than the trouble distractions cause.
Joey
This post is hilarious. You didn't' force it upon you and if you happen to slip up, Oh well. And you did! You sound like you had an interesting and exciting weekend, THANKS to technology. It was a difficult assignment and myself didn't even last five hours. But at least we all tried, (or not) and realized WHY we were doing this. I agree that two days was an annoyance. Our lives are online and I'm not ashamed to say I can't go more than five hours or less for that matter without technology. That's the time we were born and all were doing is following the status quo
I meant to say that we were born in the technological era and therefore are just following everyone else
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