The Internet: Part 1

And look what we've done with it. Food wrappers and soap operas now tell us to visit their websites. Money is pumped online by people who can't even spell HTML. All manner of pointless and irritating content is continually poured down the infinite hole of data, unfiltered and over-appreciated. In accepting freedom of speech, we can't hide from its consequences - which in this case is millions of terabytes of unreliable information, badly designed and clumsily written. We have failed our own creation and given birth something truly awful. - Some guy on the Internet

I’ve been trying an experiment recently. Even though it’s recent, it’s been a coming for a very long time.

Many years ago I had a favorite journalist, which is probably pretty atypical but I had one all the same. His name is Paul Miller. A very long time ago I used to read sites like Engadget and The Verge almost daily, and felt a sense of attachment to those sites, their content and their writers. I was a fan, I guess. Paul particularly appealed to me because he seemed like a very humble, down-to-earth guy, with a sense of humor. I don’t remember initially liking him for any particularly grand feat of journalism – he was just a cool guy. He was also openly religious, a rarity in consumer electronics and Internet culture in general. I am not religious myself, but I come from a religious background, and I have a deep respect for people who can professionally and elegantly proclaim their faith without fear and without making it a big deal.

Then Paul decided to do something really daring; on April 30th, 2012, he left the Internet entirely. He spent a year imposing pretty strict rules upon himself which allowed him to use technology, but not the Internet. No Google (search, maps, email…), no Wikipedia, no nothing. He allowed himself the ability to use computers, tablets, and phones, but only offline. Single player games. No memes. No instant information.

For reasons still uncertain to me I was absolutely fascinated by this. I thought of this guy as a hero. At that point I wasn’t as jaded and bitter with the Internet as I am now, and even then I still imagined this as of this as some sort of unashamedly political and philosophical pilgrimage which would rain down enlightenment upon us as a whole. I also remember I could thinking that I would never, ever in a million years do something so intense.

Pretty soon I stopped following consumer electronics when it became possible to do so casually. I was starting to become disgusted with the blatant consumerism which was so inherently tied it. However I remembered Paul’s story. I even briefly started keeping up with his work again a year later, when he completed his experiment. The result was not as earth-shattering as I had dreamed; in one of my favorite pieces of online literature ever, Paul essentially concluded that we will do to ourselves whatever we want, Internet or not. It was a fantastic conclusion to a fantastic experience, but not the one I had wanted. There was no enlightenment, no political epiphany. I felt cheated, even a little angry. I guess since I’m writing this, I still do.

(Concluded in Part Two)