Paul Miller este un cunoscut jurnalist pe tehnologie. Pe 1 mai 2012 a renunţat la internet, iar site-ul unde lucra, „The Verge”, a decis să-l plătească pentru a sta un an offline (pare un vis, nu? Să fii plătit să stai). Acum el s-a întors. Ce a rămas în urma lui?

Vă invit să citiţi cele două materiale scrise de Paul până acum. Pe alocuri patetice şi mult prea filosofice, ele spun totuşi multe despre lupta unui om de a-şi da seama ce înseamnă viaţa lui şi câtă influenţă are internetul asupra lui.

Începeţi cu „I'm still here: back online after a year without the internet" şi continuaţi cu „Offline: how to use the internet”. Extrag aici câteva citate care mi s-au părut relevante:

---I learned to appreciate an idea that can't be summed up in a blog post, but instead needs a novel-length exposition. By pulling away from the echo chamber of internet culture, I found my ideas branching out in new directions. I felt different, and a little eccentric, and I liked it.

By late 2012, I'd learned how to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and discovered new offline vices. Instead of taking boredom and lack of stimulation and turning them into learning and creativity, I turned toward passive consumption and social retreat.

My plan was to leave the internet and therefore find the "real" Paul and get in touch with the "real" world, but the real Paul and the real world are already inextricably linked to the internet. Not to say that my life wasn't different without the internet, just that it wasn't real life.

I'd read enough blog posts and magazine articles and books about how the internet makes us lonely, or stupid, or lonely and stupid, that I'd begun to believe them. I wanted to figure out what the internet was "doing to me," so I could fight back. But the internet isn't an individual purs