The Sabbath Manifesto

Now, here’s a project that I can relate to:

Unplugging on the Sabbath - NYTimes.com

THE Fourth Commandment doesn’t specifically mention TweetDeck or Facebook. Observing the Sabbath 3,000 years ago was more about rest and going easy on one’s family — servants and oxen included.

Sabbath Manifesto

The Sabbath Manifesto is a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world.

We’ve created 10 core principles completely open for your unique interpretation. We welcome you to join us as we carve a weekly timeout into our lives.

ElectroSmog International Festival for Sustainable Immobility

ElectroSmog

International Festival for Sustainable Immobility

March 18 – 20, 2010

The ElectroSmog festival is a critique of the worldwide explosion of mobility, and an exploration of the new forms of connectedness with others offered to us by network and communication technologies.

Our question is if these new forms of connectedness can help us to develop a viable new lifestyle less determined by speed and constant mobility, which is both ecologically and socially more sustainable.

Oppression by Technology

Free yourself from oppression by technology - opinion - 27 December 2009 - New Scientist

Are we being served by these technological wonders or have we become enslaved by them? I study the psychology of technology, and it seems to me that we are sleepwalking into a world where technology is severely affecting our well-being. Technology can be hugely useful in the fast lane of modern living, but we need to stop it from taking over.

The Technium

Kevin Kelly on The Technium: Penny Thoughts on the Technium

I‘m interested in how people personally decide to refuse a technology. I’m interested in that process, because I think that will happen more and more as the number of technologies keep increasing. The only way we can sort our identity is by not using technology. We’re used to be that you define yourself by what you use now. You define yourself by what you don’t use. So I’m interested in that process.

The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users...

In this funny (and actually poignant) 3-minute talk, social strategist Renny Gleeson breaks down our always-on social world -- where the experience we're having right now is less interesting than what we'll tweet about it later.

Isolation from Cell Phones

My Phone Must die 01
Originally uploaded by letsmakeart

Here is a list of posts on textually.org for the tag “isolation from cell phone ideas,” which date back to 2005. Emily Turrettini of Geneva, Switzerland keeps three different blogs on aspects of mobile phones and mobile content. You can see that this is a recurring idea in creative works. There is a pervasive ambivalence about these devices that intrigues me - directly related to my own ambivalence, of course. It is the aspect my mind returns to again and again...

textually.org: Isolation from Cell Phones ideas

ReBlogging from my own blog...

Is there a name for that?

Pilgrim at Bottle Creek

...The Tinker Creek kind of detailed concentration and focus of observation is impossible when the cell phone is ringing. Perhaps it is even impossible simply with the device in your pocket – a sliver of consciousness and concentration always diverted.

Cellphone Rebellion

Wife/Mother/Worker/Spy - Trying to Live a Cellphone-Free Life - NYTimes.com

Our culture has reached a point where giving up a cellphone is perceived as aggressively rebellious in the modern age.

A convergence of thought streams...

Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect Little Switch / Big Switch

I check into Jan Chipchase’s excellent blog on a regular basis and this week he had a post on two themes I have been thinking & blogging about. The first being mentions of the phone as watch:

Every new feature that is added changes patterns of use which in turn changes what it means to be a ‘phone’. Is there a natural limit to convergence? And, staring out from the back seat of a fast moving consumer goods vehicle, are we there yet? Some of you are old enough to remember the humble wrist watch as your primary tool through which to know what time it is but today knowledge of the current time is a commodity - there are so many free and readily available alternative sources of this information. (Yes, wrist watches are still relevant but mostly as lifestyle statements).As with the wrist watch there was an era before the mobile phone as we know it and will be an era after.

His essay is an exploration of the deeper implications of the iPhone’s Airplane Mode and what it means to be disconnected. He goes on to explain in four paragraphs, four major trends that will affect the ability and choice to disconnect. Here are the entries (please read the entire essay for clarity on these ideas):

four trends will ensure the practice and willingness to disconnect evolves.

(1) The first is that there will be an increased willingness to carry secondary, tertiary, quaternary and even quinary+ communication focused devices.

(2) never equate ownership of a connected device with use of its primary function particularly when use of the primary function costs money.

(3) Advances in miniaturisation, materials and manufacturing techniques will enable radically new and highly focused form factors.

(4) Lastly, our understanding of what is required to make stuff more social will have matured to the point where it is, by most people’s perspective, reasonably social.

In time the design, language and social norms for connecting, dis-connecting and re-connecting will have reached the point where switch becomes the primary interface to our digital selves.

So, now I have logged the choice to disconnect as potentially non-conformist, as priviledge, as device driven, as miniaturization influenced, and as a future social norm. I think these ideas about disconnecting are of keen interest to me. I would be grateful for reference to other sources that discuss “disconnecting” from the mobile.

Disconnecting as priviledge rather than non-conformist?

Rachel Hinman has been pondering similar thoughts on the role of disconnecting from the cellular/wifi grid. She makes an excellent point:

I think the future will be about choosing level of connectedness - and controlling personal data and information. Status won’t be about connecting. Privileged and status will be shown through the ability to disconnect completely from communication channels. What a strange inversion.

90 Mobiles in 90 Days - Blog Archive - The Luxury of Disconnecting…

Excuse me, Your Pocket Watch is Ringing..

In Constant Touch: a global history of the mobile phone, Jon Agar makes the case for the similarities between the development of the pocket watch and fixed international time zones with the development of cell phones and the ability to roam.

While it might have felt like liberation from tradition, the owner was caught anew in a more modern rationality, for, despite the fact that the pocket watch gave the owner personal access to exact time, accuracy depended on being-part of a system. If the owner was unwilling personally to make regular astronomical observations, the pocket watch would still have to be reset every ‘now‘ and then from the town clock.

In this quote he points out that taking on this new device (the watch) brought with it duties, responsibilities, and tasks that you didn’t have before. One of the aspects of technology that really interests me is the lack of awareness of repercussions we have when we take on these devices. I have met many people in my lifetime (both before and after the cell phone) that consciously chose not to wear a wrist watch because of the demands it put on their psyche. The conscious denial of time, unloading the burden of knowing the exact time, casting off the shackles of the clock - it all signified to me that the person was a free thinker, a non-conformist, someone who refused to take on all the orderly requirements of a schedule. Now you really don’t need to wear a wrist watch because the cell phone has become our new pocket watch. Will we be told by our non-conformist friends, that they don’t carry a cell phone because of the pressure it puts on their freedom?