Going Offline

Gabriel Kahane decided to take a year-long break from the Internet! Until he said it, I didn’t realize that also meant taking a year-long break from the smartphone (shudder). Barely 15 years after the iPhone was launched (2007), life without a smartphone is almost inconceivable.

 

Kahane noticed something beneficial very soon:

“I realized how much my sense of necessity had been shaped by convenience, by lack of friction. If nothing else, this saved me a ton of money. Without an internet connection, impulse buys were out of the question.”

And adds snarkily:

“…not to mention the 3,285,317 bits of trivia that I couldn’t Google.”

 

Indisputably, the Internet and the smartphone have reduced “friction” in so many of our activities – from shopping to standing in queues to book tickets to paying our bills and paying our taxes. And this is obviously a good thing:

“Most people’s lives are already chockablock with friction and tedium. These are often functions of poverty… And besides, the pace of my job and the demands of family life will not accommodate additional friction.”

Except that:

“The smartphone’s fundamental utility, often elaborately concealed under the guise of entertainment or social connection, is the elimination of friction from capitalist exchange.”

Huh, what’s that again?

“Purchases, I might add, are often made not out of any particular need, but because this stage of capitalism has delivered us within nanometers of a paradigm in which we think of a desire and see it instantly consummated.”

 

Point taken. But did Kahane gain anything by bringing back this “friction” when he went offline? Lots of little things. Like:

“Friction makes us resourceful. It’s looking at a bare pantry... (you'll find a way to still come up with) a deeply satisfying meal, and one you probably wouldn’t have made if you’d had 4,162 restaurant delivery options at your fingertips.”

And you also get to escape that other bane we hold the Internet responsible for:

“It is the presence of powerful computers in our pockets, much more than any one platform or app, that sets the tone for our society. We are everywhere connected, and yet we are unable to connect.”

 

Several valid points in what he says, but I can’t see myself voluntarily wanting to stay away from the Internet. Or the smartphone.