What if you were totally disconnected?
Following up from yesterday’s post, I’m delightfully disconnected from the grid most of the day…and am missing always-on connectivity. Most people up here near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness have phones, satellite TV and many sport these new fangled mobile wireless phone doohickey’s, but I’ve seen nary a laptop or internet cafe.
That’s not quite accurate. There’s a pizza parlor we went by yesterday where it was pointed out that ‘internet gaming’ is there with free Wifi. The clientele surely looked like gamers.
Part of me wonders about just turning it all off, moving to a place like this and living in sync with the seasons and the rhythms of my town. Would I miss much? Would it make a difference to me or to the world?
Then I think about the rich, amazingly robust and flood of information a mouse click away from me when I am connected…and those questions are answered.
By the way, this is my first post actually using my Treo 700p itself. The signal isn’t strong enough tonight to connect via my laptop. You know…this little smartphone is so capable that I may consider leaving my laptop home periodically.
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About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.
Disconnect and enjoy!
I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and was listening to CBC Radio on my commute home last night. They were talking about concerns of the townspeople of Dawson, Yukon as they were about to install cellular service for the first time. They don’t have cell towers yet! The townspeople were worried it would change the ambiance of the town for the worst. I think they are bang-on. The cons will outweigh the benefits. The thought of a town without cell service made me feel like uprooting and moving there. It’s not that lack of cell service is all importanmt per se. It’s the feelings it generated – the desire to be cut off. I have a laptop, desktop, PDA, Blackberry, iPod – you name it. But sometimes I’d like to give them all up for a month or two and just read, write, think, talk. I’m going to start wilderness canoe camping again.
BTW, I didn’t leave my e-mail address to avoid it falling into the hands of more spammers. Maybe you could disable the e-mail display feature in your blog?