This one goes out to Paul Miller. I have followed his work from Engadget to The Verge and truly appreciate his view of technology and dare I say even his world views. His most recent project though is an interesting undertaking.

He’s quitting the internet for a year.

I know I am surrounded by devices that ping, buzz, and pop-up with innumerable notifications about anything and everything around me. I know at times I have to make an extra effort to focus on an activity and not incessantly check for any new updates from Twitter, G+, Facebook, even email or texts. I wonder at times what would it be like to be disconnected entirely from such a constant stream. The closest I could imagine would be my experience during my flights from BWI to ATL (though now even Gogo in-flight brings it back). What do I do… I rest and by rest I mean sleep. I know some people cannot but I love the low resonance and hum of the engines and I just go into an knockout comatose like sleep and wake refreshed but I digress.

Let me bring it back to Paul and his experiment. By being offline for a year he is challenging himself to use the sneakernet to do his work, actually walking over to co-workers and handing them files via USB keys instead of just emailing them. Going to the library for research (non-internet based) and for music (unlimited free music before Spotify/Rdio). All in an effort to quit cold turkey the insane inundation we have all around us.

This brings me back to my own brief stints with no communication on a plane or while riding through some distant stretch of highway. My only reaction in both of these instances is to sleep (except for when I am driving obviously). It just makes me wonder if I am really really worn out. I know the last thing I see as I sleep is a glowing screen with a Movie/TV show playing and the first thing I do is reach for those slew of devices to see what I missed during my mental disconnect for a few hours.

Maybe I need to purposefully disconnect more. I will be following Paul’s exploits to see how he does. Funny enough there’s no way for me to get Paul’s updates about being off the internet except by going on the internet. Obviously I am not in a place yet where I could go so completely offline, but maybe at least I can try it from time to time. Who knows maybe I will just end up sleeping.

Born of Indian parents in the United States but growing up with Tamil spoken at home and with relatives it was always interesting to me how I saw my own culture. I was born in New York City but raised in Athens, GA and so I identify with the “yankee” vs “rebel” side of the United States.

I like my sweet tea brewed with sugar in it. I love Coke. I drive a diesel pickup truck. I hunt and fish and eat what I kill. With the right surrounding I even pick up a pretty deep southern drawl if you’re so lucky. Taking a glance at that without seeing me in person you would picture a white, conservative, southern, male “redneck”. Well all that is basically true except for white part; just replace it with brown. Yea scratch your head with that for awhile.

The reality of it all is that with globalization really hitting a maturity where there is little to no barrier for entry, kids could grow up anywhere. Not just the US melting pot. I have some close friends here in Baltimore who’s children were born here and schooled here, but soon they are going to return to India because there just simply are better opportunities “back home”. Now that is “home” for the parents, but the kids on the other hand might see the Mid-Atlantic coast of the US as home. That might change when they go back to India, but it will build their thought processes about the world and cultural.

I wonder now how we approach teaching these children with very broad world views. Better yet on a personal level, how I parent a kid like that.

Whoa. I just freaked myself out.