I've hatched this idea whereby I'm planning to totally abstain from digital media, for a substantial period of time. No Internet, no cellphone, no CDs or DVDs, no television, no e-mail, no iPods or Wii's, no texting, no Google. There are still a lot of details to be worked out: which forms of communication will be off-limits, what the acceptable substitutes will be, how long the experiment will last. I'm thinking at least a month, maybe a semester or even a year.
Most people laugh when I tell them about my plan. Responses to the proposal tend to fall into two camps: 1) it's an admirable plan but it cannot be done, or 2) it's a undesirable plan and it cannot be done anyway. "No way!" one person exclaimed. "Should I just giggle?" another asked. My friends and colleagues generally think that digital media are indispensable tools without which modern human beings cannot survive or, at least, without which life is not worth living. I like to point out that large swathes of the world somehow get by using little or no digital media, including my father right here in the U.S.A., a lifelong mechanical engineer who doesn't know how to go online.
Americans aren't pre-disposed for abstinence, that's for sure, what with the Protestant work ethic and all. How successful were the counter-cultural movements promoting "TV Turnoff Week" — now rechristened "Digital Detox Week" and devoted to "screen-time awareness"! — and "Buy Nothing Day"? (If you don't already know these campaigns, they've been around since the early 90s, taking place the third week of April and the Friday after Thanksgiving, respectively. You might consider the latter an appealing alternative to 6 a.m. mayhem at the local box store on Black Friday this year). Our culture values productivity, abundance, speed and busy-ness over the absences thereof — namely, slowness and idleness. Spiritual types might say that we're just racing towards death.
Every year, I assign my students a "Digital Media Abstinence" project, where they're supposed to avoid the Internet, cellphones, TV/DVD, etc. for a single day. Usually, only a couple of people in a class of around 20 report getting through one day without media, and even those scant claims of success can't be verified. Many of them admit that they didn't try that hard. They seem bewildered when I mention my own lifestyle experiment, incredulous as to why anyone would want to do such a thing.
Other friends have helpfully recommended that I resurrect my Walkman and rabbit ears. An old, dear friend of mine did show faith in my ability to carry out
the project, asserting that I am good at denying myself things.
(Hope she'll notice that I just called her "old"!) But really, it's not denial when you think of all the alternative ways of spending one's time that open up when one creates the space for them. If I get bored while abstaining from digital media, it might be due to a failure of imagination.