Unplugged Sabbath: Did You Disconnect?

by nexttolastblog

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 07:41 AM EDT

Did you observe The National Day of Unplugging?

It was a nondenominational, apolitical, and free holiday.

Sorry, I missed it. I found out about the Digital Day Off from the YouTube (video embedded below) two days too late. My Tweetdeck and Inbox must have blurred whatever publicity was buzzing about this “internet-off” day.

What does “unplugging” mean?

No email? Not even once per hour? No iPhone or smartphone use? Maybe a call or text message per hour? No Internet, Twitter, Facebook, or Google Buzz? Where does the day-off stop? Total abstinence from all devices; even your iPod or Zune?

Some quotes from a New York Times article on unplugging, read like this:

“next to excruciating,”

“Somebody once said to me that a computer fits with anxiety like a lock in a key,”

“You have an anxious moment out in your life, or in your world, and you want a little hit, and your e-mail can do that.”

I know there is something very large here. We are still at the beginning of the digital age. Our connection speeds are still slow and only 2 out of 3 Americans have a broadband connection. In a few short years almost all of us will have smart-phones with advanced high-speed connections.

Soon there will not only be ‘unplugged weeks’, but ‘unplugged camps’ for kids, ‘unplugged resorts’ for adults, and ‘unplugged therapists’ for those of us who can’t miss a day of Tweeting or take the disconnected resort vacation.