Worldwide internet shutdown day

von Roland Hachmann | Feb 25, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing

Here is a tough assignment: Shut down your computer for a whole day and become analog, as PSFK pointed out. They quote the official site with this:

Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the Internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!

PSFK continues with a few thoughts on what might happen:

A few scenarios come to mind. Emails will go unanswered, and blogs will not be updated. During lunch breaks, people might talk to their co-workers and go for walks outside. One might even buy a newspaper to catch up on the latest.

At home, computer games will wonder what they’ve done to cause their players to ignore them so completely. The echoes of IM bleeps and pings will temporarily cease.

But the underlying questions beneath Shutdown Day are: Are we so addicted and dependent on our computers that we cannot go without them even for a day? How do we relate to the world when computers are not the biggest blips on our radar screens?

I am uncertain if this is really worthwile. The vote currently goes at 17k „I can“ vs 2.6k „I cannot“. Well, of course. This is a Saturday. People won’t be working, and they can easily postpone their few emails to the following Sunday…

But hey. I will participate. I will be on vacation – I will hopefully be doing something fantastically analogue, like reading a book (yes, information printed on dead wood) in the sun (yes, real light, much brighter than anything I am used to)