Kick-starting the blog entries & project development

In the Beginning...

There were four media students who sought to explore, with some irony, the notion of a 'Digital Sabbath' - a period of time sans technology and internet - for our Online Media university subject. 

It felt only natural, then, to start our research for this ... on the internet. It turns out that, as with most social initiatives these days, the web is indispensible for advertising and information delivery. The first hit on our search: the American social activist 'machine' Adbusters - magazine, advertiser, global network and blogger - who seem to have popularised en-masse switch-offs with their Digital Detox Week campaign, now on an annual rotation.

Source: Adbusters / Arbol

It spread to the UK, and is now slowly filtering to Australian travel and wellness media - though a national campaign is yet to be seen. 

One particular digital detox app for Android notes that this is no joke. "Starting a Digital Detox session is a commitment. Once you start, it can't be cancelled – your phone will be unusable except for the emergency dialer (which only allows emergency calls) until the session is complete." Sounds drastic.

Source: Digital Detox: Take Over Your Headspace

And The New York Times, finger ever to the zeitgeist's pulse, joined the debate.  This particularly insightful article explores the issue well, tapping into the insights of those most connected: Silicon Valley natives. Switching off has become the latest trend, picked up like the latest version of the iPad and with all the technological frustrations. Yet it's advocated as a health benefit, an unavoidable, necessary step on the evolution of technology, and it's started interesting debates about the responsibility of software designers in creating 'addictive' products. There's even a conference, Wisdom 2.0, where the high rollers of Facebook, Google, eBay and PayPal learn meditation and yoga techniques to 'balance' their lives.

Also on The Times website, a fascinating forum showcases op-eds from a variety of industry, academic and medical professionals on the perils of multitasking and (in)ability to disconnect from the digital world. Some of the issues they raise would be good to explore in an Australian context: such as the comment from Liza Daly, a software designer, who says that while she can no longer "differentiate between staring at screens for our jobs and staring at screens for pleasure", as "the number of screens in the world has multiplied, so too has interest in traditional, hands-on crafts ([hers] is gardening and cooking)".

Or that of Timothy B. Lee, a scholar at Princeton University. He acknowledges the disruptive effect the internet can have on some people's ability to empathise with others, but legitimately counters that "for most people the reality is just the opposite: the Internet broadens and strengthens our social ties and greatly enhances our ability to engage with one another."

Nevertheless, it's not the trend to talk of such things. We're more likely to encounter alluring travel tales of digital retreats in exotic locations, such as this one in the Caribbean or another in the American wildnerness.

Source: The Daily Mail (online)

 I wonder if there's anywhere in Australia that has joined the digital detox vogue? Is there a big enough market for such drastic retreats yet? Who would be going to them? As a younger user, who doesn't really remember a time of 'being switched off', there's not much appeal apart from the tropical weather and a break from the flood of inane status updates. The real question for me would not be, what am I gaining from abandoning technology, but rather, what am I missing out on?

For my other group members, here's a quick reminder of some of the other things we need to think about in this blog (as per course reader):

• The development of ideas and research discoveries made
• Different story angles
• Possible publications and target user groups
• How we are researching the needs of the target groups
• How the week's lecture and blogging impact on the feature's development
• Possible online storytelling approach (video, audio, animation, social media channel etc.)
• Make sure posts are well researched  and with evidence of embedded links and image content 

Till the next post, an amusing video by a Huffington Post contributor and 'technology shabbat' practicer, Tiffany Slain. Apart from sharing her enthusiasm for the idea, she also provides a reworking of Alan Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl", a new manifesto to the digital sabbath.

Source: Tiffany Slain and Ken Goldberg, YouTube