Someone I know  — an actress who was in a play I produced in 1993, now magically reintroduced to me via the wonder of Facebook — informed me a few days ago that right now we’re in the midst of “The National Day of Unplugging,” during which one is encouraged to “Put that smartphone down! Back away from that iPad! Switch off your laptop, and stop Tweeting!” at least during “the Sabbath.” The theory behind this, I take it, is that minus what Thomas Friedman called “the Evernet,” we will all draw closer together.

I posted immediately that I wouldn’t be participating. (And, if you’re reading this today, neither are you.)

My second reason for not participating is that I’m not Jewish, and not observing “the Sabbath.”

But my main reason is this:  As someone who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, I grew up unplugged. It was really really dull. I didn’t know then what I was wishing for (although I know that it was a plea for some sort of change), but now I know:  I was wishing for the internet and for digital computing power.

Digital computing power allows me to write, film, or record scripts, thoughts, music, movies, art, really anything I want — and then disseminate it all over the world. Just like I so desperately wanted to do when I was a kid, when the options were limited to Xerox copying (at 25 cents a page), the U.S. mail, cassette tape recorders, Super 8 video cameras, and the like. Most of the offerings I couldn’t afford, and what I could afford was slow and ineffective.

Things like “The National Day of Unplugging” strike me as elitist. Evidently, we lucky people, we 1/6 of the world’s population who can easily access the internet, have so much access that we now view it as a menace, an indulgence, something we should deprive ourselves of. The internet thus joins the long list of vices such as drinking, dancing, smoking, acting, and eating chocolate and red meat, that well-intentioned meddlers have inveighed against over the years when really it should be none of their business. It also reminds me of the back-to-nature crowd who view the outdoors as vast pastoral idylls, whereas those of us who grew up in it know that life in nature alternates between great danger (rattlesnakes, sinkholes, disease-carrying pests, cliff faces, falling trees, hurricanes) and extreme tedium. There is, often, nothing to do in the great outdoors, except strive to survive. That is the story of much of our history, and I’m glad we’ve turned the page on that.

Here’s what I plan to do during every  “National Day of Unplugging” and similarly blinkered notions:  use up all the available broadband surrendered by the people willfully sitting in the quiet.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2011 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.