The assignment was off to a not-so-great start. I had committed to entirely cut my internet access for a duration of 24 hours, and I was already bargaining with myself to delay the experiment. There was this Really Important Phone Call I had to make, and it already felt like I had to bend the rules. For my defense, I was meant to check in with my partner, who had been navigating immigration issues from outside of the country, on the other side of the planet. Granted, I should have made that call earlier, but as anyone involved in a remote relationship knows, the complexity of romantic life scales up with the number of time zones between you and the other half. In any case, even before the experiment had started, it was already impacted by the non-negotiable nature of these interactions. I called my partner, and then proceeded to shut down all my online devices.
Later in the morning, I found myself wondering what I was even going to do while eating, as I usually would watch some professional esports games during breakfast. Slightly embarrassed, I remembered the contempt I once felt toward people who had television turned on at all-times including family meals. For once, I would be eating at the dinner table rather than my desk, without a digital presence to entertain me.
As I ate, I made a mental list of things this temporary no-phone-no-internet rule would entail. At the top, there was the inability to access most media (I did not have access to physical formats other than books), work on my research (most of my documents were hosted in the cloud), and code (you could only go so far while offline). More surprising, I could not even play music, as my MIDI keyboard required an app in order to make any sound. I had been aware of my dependence on online services, but this whole ordeal felt unnecessarily disruptive: surely, I should be able to read my own writing even without a connection? Thankfully, no phone also meant no alarm clock, and the 24 hour period would be over before I woke up the next day. For the time being, I was on my way out to see some friends in Brooklyn.
Of course, I had told them in advance I would not be reachable, in the event they changed their plans. They did anyway, and I arrived an hour early, although I had spent 20 minutes lost in Clinton Hill, asking directions from people on the street, freezing in a cold weather I had not anticipated. Things started going a lot smoother as the other guests began to arrive, and the rest of my day was spent socially, in a way that did not require a screen. Admittedly, there were a couple of instances where I found myself standing in a room full of people staring at their devices, but I did not miss mine too much otherwise.
Before it started, I had decided to make the assignment extra hard, by opting to not just shut down my phone but also give up on all internet access. That’s because I anticipated a mere no-phone policy would be just too easy to live with: as I was in-between jobs, with a partner stranded abroad, there was not a lot going on in my inboxes. If I had been a productive agent of society under capitalism’s rule, this whole experiment would have been a lot more disruptive. I imagined missing on important communications from coworkers, professional opportunities in the making, and content of the kind that enables us to remain relevant. In retrospect, that made me wonder: how much longer could I make this last?