Paul Miller is back online. Senior editor for the tech website The Verge, Miller took a year off the internet between 2012 and 2013 to see how it would impact his experience. As we might expect, Miller reports that being offline in 21st century society is rather inconvenient. No email. Miller had to deliver his submissions to The Verge by flashdrive. No social media. Miller was out of the loop on all sorts of things. He couldn’t check Facebook to see what his friends were up to. Neither could he jump on Google to browse the open web. No YouTube. No Netflix. Life offline, Miller discovered, can be extremely boring. He admits: ‘I did have a lot of free time, but a lot of it was loneliness and boredom in ways that I hadn’t really experienced before’.
Being disconnected was also empowering in a way. Miller wasn’t subject to constant interruptions and requests, and so he was at liberty to decide what to do with his day. He could get things done. He started working on the book that he envisaged coming out of the experiment. He was able to engage with lengthy reading projects, and spend quality time with himself and others. Unfortunately, the initial burst of productivity only lasted so long. Miller disconnected from the internet in the hope of re-engaging creative touchstones and overcoming blocks to his productivity. In the end, he discovered that his productively problems ‘didn’t have a lot to do with the Internet’. The same problems ‘manifested differently on and offline’.
Positive insights that Miller gleaned from his experiment include the importance of having good habits and the value of mindfulness and presence in life. ‘I want to practice things like patience’, Miller claims in an interview with CNN. ‘Just being present with people and not having so much noise in my head’. Miller found that without a connection to the internet, it was easier for him to be present in the moment. Yet, presence is something we have to work at. In the context of smartphones, laptops, and wearable computers, it is more important than ever that we practice the virtue of disconnecting our minds from the internet so that we can genuinely connect with a real person before us. Miller pledges: ‘Now that I’m back on the Internet I really want to be the shining example of what it’s like to actually pay attention to somebody and put away your devices’.
There is a lesson here for us all. Sometimes we need to disconnect from our devices in order to discover what real connection is about.
Philosophy for change 
Reblogged this on maha's place.
Disconnectivty – intentionally unplugging from social media and internet driven devices – may become a means of rehabilation for a digitally saturated generation. Paul Millers desire to engage the world offline with a new midfulness is just one of the potential outcomes of practicing disconnectivity. I imagine as the pyschological effects of living a life in constant connection to social media become better understood, for instance the effects of splitting our selves into fragments to fit certain online profiles while we still live with ourselves out there in the world, we may find, like Miller a renewed desire to connect face to face after a stint with disconnectivity.
I agree! Precisely. Thank you.
Wow, I’m disappointed with his findings. I can understand inconvience workwise but idealistically (I guess) I’d love to think it’d be a positive thing being offline…
Well, there are positives and negatives. Miller learned a lot of valuable things about himself. He also came to appreciate the value of online social connectivity. This is what I think is interesting.
That’s where my idealism comes in – I’d love to think we could all get along without that..but I’m showing my age 😉