The New Movement to Unplug

Mark Bittman writes in the New York Times:

In short, my name is Mark, and I a€™m a techno-addict. But after my airplane experience, I decided to do something about it. Thus began my "secular Sabbath" -- a term I found floating around on blogs -- a day a week where I would be free of screens, bells and beeps. An old-fashioned day not only of rest but of relief. [...]

This movement to unplug appears to be gaining traction everywhere, from the blogosphere, where wired types like Ariel Meadow Stallings (http://electrolicious.com/unplugged) brag about turning off the screen one day a week (and how many books they've read so far this year), to the corporate world.

For example, Nathan Zeldes, a principal engineer at Intel (employees there read or send three million e-mail messages daily), is running a couple of experiments, one in which people spend a morning a week at work but offline, another in which people consciously reduce their e-mail output. Though he'€™s not reporting results, he's encouraged and he says people are participating.

Link: I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

Ariel Meadow Stallings is getting quite a bit of coverage for her 52 Nights Unplugged project, which is this: "One night a week for a year, I am going to completely unplug from anything with a screen."  She was inspired by a Spark Northwest workshop in January about "soul tech".

Comments

[Nathan Zeldes]

The "Quiet Time" and "No Email Day" experiments at Intel are still underway; you can read more about them at http://blogs.intel.com/it/2007/10/quiet_time_on_track_no_email_d.php

It's good to see an increase in awareness around this entire subject...

[Kevin Arthur]

Excellent -- thanks for the pointer!

[Leif Hansen]

Hi Kevin,
Thanks for mentioning, in addition to the NY Times articles, Ariel's project and our workshop that inspired it. I admit to a little jealousy that our biz name was neither mentioned in the Today Show piece (though they did mention our personal names) or this NY times article.
I hadn't heard of your blog and am really excited to learn of it via my website's stats...I hope we can talk sometime soon because I'd love to hear some more of your story and what motivated you to start this blog. You can email me using leif at sparknw.com

Warmly,
Leif
http://www.SparkNW.com