Tomorrow is International ShutDown Day and, as many of you know, this is not an insignificant topic to me. I’m excited to see that the concept of dethroning technology’s dominant role in our life, even for one day, is getting so much attention. The stated purpose of the Canadian organization who is sponsoring this event is:
“The idea of Shutdown Day project is simple — just shutdown your
computer for one whole day of the year and involve yourself in some
other activities: outdoors, nature, sports, fun stuff with friends and
family — whatever, just to remind yourself that there still exists a
world outside your monitor screen.”
Because this is falling on a Saturday, and my normal ’shut down day’ (my tech sabbath) is on Sunday, I’m going to go the whole weekend as low tech as possible. This is still really hard for me and I know that the One Ring, I mean my iPhone, is going to be itchy in my pocket.
I have so many conflicted feelings right now as I write, that the only way to get them out is a quick brainstorm (I also really need to get to bed, but wanted to say something before this weekend.) I’m feeling:
- Excitement that people are thinking more and more about these things, and taking steps like this day, taking our Soul Tech workshops, or joining efforts like Ariel’s 52 Nights Unplugged (though I haven’t seen a blog from her about this for quite some time now -is she still unplugging one night a week?)
- Feeling stupid for feeling jealous that I’m not getting as much attention/press I’ve gotten in pasts months for our Soul Tech workshop (which, if you didn’t know, was featured in many national and international papers, and then eventually on the Today Show -see the link before for more info including a video from NBC.)
- Feeling guilty that I still struggle with this issue so much
- Feeling concerned that people don’t really ‘get’ how serious this issue of increasing technocentricity is and could become
- Feeling anxious to finish my book on this topic
- Feeling, well, its time for bed…
Good luck to those of you doing it, and hope it turns into more of a habit.
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