Food For Thought: Online or Offline
November 8, 2014
I’m in the midst of a Reflections on Technology class at UMass Amherst, University Without Walls. One of the objects of the class is to reflect on our relationship with technology. This week’s lesson is specifically about fasting from technology and the implications of that fast. Deeper posed questions brought up in our class reading included a couple of articles on the meanings of being online and offline. Nathan Jurgenson’s, The IRL Fetish, is a great read on the debate over what it means to be online and subsequently offline.
A lot can be said about the benefits of going offline for a time, and Jurgenson points out that more and more people participate in spending time offline. In reality, there is no separation between being online or offline, it is contextual, among other things.
Here’s a great video on the concepts on and offline:
I’ve spent the better part of the past 16 – 17 years online. Online is a way of life for me, I have an online business and two blogs. Long before there were blogs, I was posting daily affirmations and daily inspirations on my business website, providing meaningful content and information beyond the products that I sell online, both wholesale and retail. In 2003, I thrust myself into the world of political blogging, first writing for the Kerry ’04 campaign blog, and then starting my own political blog in 2005. I still 10 years later, find myself very much immersed in social activism online utilizing my blog as well as Facebook and Twitter.
I frequent Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis, I have 2 computers and a smart phone. I know when I need to step away from the computer and smart phone, and yes there I times when although I know better, I still find myself online. I cherish my online time, the connections with friends and family, the inspiration and the information. I also cherish those times when I am offline, unconnected, walking in nature or simply sitting in the still in my own home, with no music or TV clogging up my thought process.
Still even when I am offline, there are times, as Jurgenson and the video from PBS’s Idea Channel points out, that I am thinking about things to share online like my photography. What does that say about my being offline? It tells me that I am connected to this wonderful digital world that is symbiotic in nature, and it provides meaningful context in my life and the lives of those I am digitally connected to.
But wait, there’s more to think about in the debate of life on and offline…
