The Cost of Convenience
The drive to make life more convenient is the force that shapes modern economies and day-to- day life. As Tim Wu wrote in The Times, convenience quickly makes other options obsolete.
“Once you have used a washing machine, laundering clothes by hand seems irrational,” Mr. Wu wrote. “After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified.”
To resist technology — to not own a cellphone, to avoid Google, or to renounce social media — requires “a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism,” he wrote.
Erik Hagerman displays such fanaticism. His experiment — to avoid hearing any political news about America after November 8, 2016 — requires a monk-like devotion.
He forces his family, friends and acquaintances to abide by his rules and avoid talking about current events, what he calls The Blockade. It started with the election of Donald J. Trump, which upset him badly, but now he says he is happier than he has ever been.
“I just look at the weather,” Mr. Hagerman, 53, told The Times. He lives alone on a pig farm in Ohio and has a feeling he hasn’t experienced in a long time. “I am bored. But it’s not bugging me.”
While Mr. Hagerman inconveniences his social circle, Mr. Wu points out that we give a different name to our other inconvenient choices.
“We call them hobbies, avocations, callings, passions,” he wrote. They are rewarding, he said, because we confront nature’s laws and the limits of our own bodies when “carving wood, melding raw ingredients, fixing a broken appliance, writing code, timing waves or facing the point when the runner’s legs and lungs begin to rebel against him.”
Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, challenged the readers of his blog to remove all digital interactions that weren’t critical to their work and lives. After a month, they could slowly add everything back in.
Anya Mushakevich, a Belarusian studying at the University of Pennsylvania, said her inability to socialize online would force her friends overseas to make the effort to find her email or phone number.
“I feel more invested in the time I spend with people,” Ms. Mushakevich, 20, told The Times. “And because we interact less frequently, we have this idea that we want to make the most of the experience. That makes it seem more meaningful than if we had all of the time in the world, like we do on Facebook.”
Mr. Newport told The Times the experiment made many of his readers realize just how dependent they had become on websites and apps. Many who unplugged reported that they had picked up new hobbies: painting, exercise, writing a book.
Sara Clemence, a travel editor, wrote in her new book, “Away & Aware: A Field Guide to Mindful Travel,” that the key to a great trip is to ditch the technology.
“It’s about disconnecting from your devices and connecting to your surroundings, being aware of and attentive to the people and food and culture and scenery around you,” Ms. Clemence told The Times. “It’s something that’s gotten a little lost in this hyper- connected age.”
When traveling with children, it’s important to get them involved too, and abide by the same limits on devices. Children may get bored, which she called “perfectly healthy.”
“My 5-year- old son started making toys out of whatever materials we had at hand,” Ms. Clemence said. “He would make a house out of tissue box, or he’d make a bottle into an airplane. It made me feel we were accidentally enhancing his resourcefulness.”