“You can’t be Amish alone.” Exactly this, and this is where my husband and I are struggling. We know we need to de-techify, or more specifically, de-phoneify, but we don’t know anyone else *in real life* who is struggling with this stuff. A few friends here and there spread out across the country, grad school classmates and colleagues who all agree “it’s a problem”, even our homeschool co-op that tends to limit the use of tech...but no one to say “meet me for coffee and leave your phone at home.”
There’s a lot of great writing on Substack about leaving tech behind, and I read it all, and it all sounds so lovely and romantic, and also, it requires accountability. Which the online community, by definition of the project, cannot provide. I don’t know how to get there. How do we start real-person communities and relationships to support one another in this?
As I have gotten older (I'm 62) I have learned to appreciate some "friction" in the world. I have been an avid user and developer of technology (I worked for NASA for 35 years) and have no regrets at all. But just because you have a tool that does certain things really, really well, doesn't mean you should always use it for everything. It is certainly seductive to do that and we (myself included over the years) fall into the "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" trap. I think that's one of the issues with fast moving technology, the technology always leads the culture, often in really negative ways. If you have read anything by Jonathan Haidt you will know what I mean. So good on ya for recognizing that early and putting it into practice where appropriate. You may get accused of being a Luddite by your peers, but sometimes you have to go at it alone and lead by example.
“You can’t be Amish alone.” Exactly this, and this is where my husband and I are struggling. We know we need to de-techify, or more specifically, de-phoneify, but we don’t know anyone else *in real life* who is struggling with this stuff. A few friends here and there spread out across the country, grad school classmates and colleagues who all agree “it’s a problem”, even our homeschool co-op that tends to limit the use of tech...but no one to say “meet me for coffee and leave your phone at home.”
There’s a lot of great writing on Substack about leaving tech behind, and I read it all, and it all sounds so lovely and romantic, and also, it requires accountability. Which the online community, by definition of the project, cannot provide. I don’t know how to get there. How do we start real-person communities and relationships to support one another in this?
As I have gotten older (I'm 62) I have learned to appreciate some "friction" in the world. I have been an avid user and developer of technology (I worked for NASA for 35 years) and have no regrets at all. But just because you have a tool that does certain things really, really well, doesn't mean you should always use it for everything. It is certainly seductive to do that and we (myself included over the years) fall into the "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" trap. I think that's one of the issues with fast moving technology, the technology always leads the culture, often in really negative ways. If you have read anything by Jonathan Haidt you will know what I mean. So good on ya for recognizing that early and putting it into practice where appropriate. You may get accused of being a Luddite by your peers, but sometimes you have to go at it alone and lead by example.