Can We Really Unplug?; Slate,com, 1/3/12

Katie Roiphe, Slate.com; Can We Really Unplug? :

"We don’t use the Internet; it uses us. It takes our empty lives, our fruit fly attention spans, and uses them for its infinite glittering preoccupations. Solutions like Freedom or a couple of days at a Benedictine monastery can’t remake us into peaceful, moderate, contented inhabitants of the room we are in. If you ask any 60-year-old what life was like before the Internet they will likely say they “don’t remember.” How can they not remember the vast bulk of their adult life? The advent of our online lives is so transforming, so absorbing, so passionate that daily life beforehand is literally unimaginable. We can’t even envision freedom, in other words, the best we can hope for is Freedom."

[Podcast] Pico Iyer On Unplugging; NPR's On Point, 1/17/12

[Podcast] NPR's On Point; Pico Iyer On Unplugging:

"We text, we tweet, we carry cell phones like they’re life lines. We check our e-mails, our Facebook pages, our online status six different ways. And then we start again. We’ve known for a while now that the digital world – great as it is – could be addictive. Overwhelming. An obsession. A leash. A prison.

Some people are breaking out. Letting go. Staying off. Travel writer Pico Iyer is one. He moved cell-phone-free to the boondocks of Japan for a reason. Better to go slow, go quietly, go off the digital grid."