Brandon Moon

Well, I made it through my Internet fast!

While it was a good experience, it wasn’t exactly what I thought it’d be. What surprised me most is that it wasn’t really that different. I didn’t have compulsive urges to get online or anything. But it was surprisingly difficult to cut the Internet out of my life entirely. Something I pretty much failed at doing.

First of all, I allowed email during the fast. Basically, there was too much of a chance I could miss an important email from work. I also had to check things like mint.com or my bank, since I do my money management online. And, well, I have a pretty pitiful music collection. I tried for the first half of the week to only listen to my music, but eventually I broke down and went back to Pandora. Oh, and I left my weather widget running…

In short, I had a surprising amount of interaction with the Internet in spite of my fast. There’s a good portion of my life that does rely on the Internet. I don’t consider this an unhealthy thing though. Finances, email, etc. are all very good uses of the Internet in my mind.

What I did succeed at was untying myself entirely from my social networks. No Facebook, no Google+ (I do check it from time to time), no Twitter, no blog, no socializing of any kind on the Internet really.

Frankly, staying away from social networks didn’t really change things much for me. It was kinda nice to not worry about finding cool links to share, or having to compose a blog post, or anything like that. But that’s fun stuff I do with my free time, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Also, I wasn’t left with a bunch of free time and not knowing what to do with myself. Turns out I just read a lot more, and took up some old hobbies, like origami (which is a lot of fun actually).

The place where my Internet fast made the biggest difference was at work. First of all, I have to make a point here. A bit of browsing during work hours is actually a good thing. To be hyper-focused on one thing can actually be counterproductive sometimes. It’s good to take a break once in a while, and browsing is a perfectly good way to do that.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve wasted quite a bit of time browsing when I should be working. Not to excess or anything (I do get my work done), but it can be a bit of a distraction. I found that during work hours, if I took my breaks doing other things (like origami), it fulfilled that break without being too distracting. It was much easier to get back into the flow of work and get stuff done. This is something I’d like to keep doing.

And so, I’m back online. Without too much damage (either from being away, or from coming back). And I’m pleased to say, I think I’ve already found a pretty good balance.

Well… I did it. I made it to the end of my 30 day challenge. And quite frankly… I’m amazed I made it this far. There were a few times I almost gave up. And there were a few times I struggled to get a post out that day. But here I am, at the end, having completed it… and it feels good!

The more important part, however, is what I learned from this experience:

1. I learned that I actually have a little bit of talent at this. I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have expressed appreciation for and interest in my writing. Is my style perfect? No. Do I have awesome structure to my posts? No. But at least I can communicate my ideas (at least somewhat clearly). And it’s helped me to appreciate my own writing a lot more than before.

2. I learned that there is so much to say, and so few people who care. This may seem contrary to the last post, but let me explain. While I truly appreciate the people who read my blog (that means you), I know that compared with the readership of a lot of other blogs out there, mine is in the minority. I’d be willing to wage, however, that most of you have a blog of your own. Maybe you don’t post much on it, maybe you do, but either way, most of us are generating content online. Amazing amounts of content, really. And sometimes I wonder… are we generating more content than we can consume? I can’t possibly keep up with everything out there that’s being published online every day… nobody can. So why do we get upset when so few people pay attention to what we write? It’s a funny conundrum.

3. Some topics are more controversial than others. My apple posts and my Harry Potter post drew a lot of attention. Yet others, such as my posts about Tasha didn’t seem to draw much attention. I find this a little sad, really, that we express more interest in things of less significance, and less interest in the more meaningful things. It’s not that I don’t doubt you read them, and maybe you really did appreciate them, but I didn’t always see it (though I did see it from my wife—love you honey!).

4. It’s hard to come up with something interesting to post about every day! I’ll admit, a lot of those posts I didn’t spend a ton of time on, and they were kind of grudgingly finished. I also learned that if I open my eyes, I can find something interesting to post about fairly often. And I definitely enjoy posting about something I’m interested in much more than posting about less interesting things.

I’ve enjoyed my adventure. Now it’s time to think up another 30 day challenge!

(Also, this is my 100th post on this blog. How’s that for awesome timing?)

Well, I’m nearing the end of my thirty day challenge. It’s been an interesting adventure, and I’ll have more to say tomorrow (the last post of the challenge), but I wanted to discuss my plans for the week after I finish.

I’ve always heard of people doing such things as a “Facebook fast” or “Internet fast” and always thought that a little strange. I guess I assumed I was good enough at managing my online life that I didn’t need something like that. Since starting this thirty day challenge, I’ve reconsidered. I still think I’m capable of managing my online life, but I can see some positive benefits from being offline.

First of all, computers have made it so easy to distract ourselves. The Internet is so gosh darn ubiquitous nowadays. The recent trend of “apps” has made it even worse. Now not only is there more content out there than we can possibly consume, but we also have so many different ways of consuming it! “Should I check Twitter through my phone or my computer? The website or a different app that also brings in Facebook and Foursquare and LinkedIn? Oh my goodness, there’s a new Twitter app out there. Is it better than my current app? I’ll have to try it.” We almost can’t help ourselves.

My friend wrote a rather cool blog post about how enabling the Internet is. Specialists have been brought down a peg, due to the vast amount of knowledge available—free of charge—on the Internet. We will never be held back for lack of knowledge. We assume, however, that knowledge and wisdom are the same thing. While knowledge can be enabling, it can also be encumbering. It seems that with so much information out there, we end up losing our passions. We hop from one idea to the next, never really delving deep into any one, and consequently not benefiting that much. I myself am guilty of this all the time.

I’m not sure how or when it happened, but somehow I put more importance on the Internet and social networking and “cool things” that I have missed out on some of the things I’m most interested in. Guitar, piano, hiking, building stuff with my hands, enjoying the people I’m with, and most of all… being satisfied with where I am. The incredibly fast pace of the Internet has me always feeling antsy, like I’ve got to get on to the next big thing. I want to enjoy now.

And so, I’ve decided that next week I will take an “Internet fast.” I will turn of data on my phone (my phone becomes surprisingly boring without data), I will restrict myself to work related browsing while at work (something I should be doing more of anyways), and I will stay offline wherever else I am. I will find other ways to enjoy my time, and I will catch up on the things I should be paying more attention to.

I’m excited!

(Don’t worry though, I’ll be back to post more. Maybe not as much, but I’ll be here.)

Picture yourself back in your dating years. You meet this cute, fun, attractive girl or boy and start going out. Things are going well for a while, but then they lose interest and break up with you (Sad story, I know, but… keep reading). You call, you try to change his or her mind, but it looks like things aren’t working out. Maybe they stop answering your calls, or they find ways to avoid you. Eventually you learn to accept their decision, and you move on. Contact has been broken. We’ve probably all been through it.

Now flash forward to today. Maybe you’re happily married by now, maybe you’ve got a significant other, maybe not. But for some reason, you can’t resist the temptation to look up your old flame online. You can find all sorts of details on their life, if they’re married or dating someone, where they live, what they do, what they find interesting, who they still associate with, etc. You might even go so far as to send a friend invite on Facebook and try to “rekindle” the friendship, which can lead to trouble.

Why do we do it?

Or maybe a better question is: should we do it?

Twenty or thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have been as big of an issue. In order to “catch up” with this person, you’d either have to actually talk to them, or basically stalk them. There wasn’t a whole lot of middle ground. But nowadays, that person is actively posting status updates and information about themselves on the web, almost asking you to stalk them. It’s way to easy to find out information about someone else—even if you’re not friends with them on Facebook. Some how I’ve become an “active non-participant” in so many of my friend’s lives. I don’t talk to them anymore, either online or in real life, but somehow I know that they just had a baby, his name is so-and-so, he’s 7 lb. 12 oz. with black hair and blue eyes, he was born at X hospital, and on and on. I’ve even seen pictures of him online. Should I really know all this about someone I haven’t spoken to in years?

Maybe it’s time we realized that we need to set some online social boundaries. I really like this article posted by one of my friends. It talks mostly about social etiquette and how to be more careful about what we share. I think we should take it a bit further, and perhaps be a bit more careful about how we browse.

We need to put our online lives at a lower priority than then our non-virtual lives. Call or email your friends and let them know what’s going on in your life before you broadcast it on Facebook. Stay away from the more “serious” online discussions — leave that for in-person communication. If you discover that someone is in a tough situation, reach out to them in real life rather than leaving a half-hearted comment online. Don’t forget that online social media is meant to enrich our existing relationships, not replace them.

Don’t get caught in the “social spiderweb.”

So you may have noticed something going around facebook, a status says something like “FB has automatically set itself to the Non-Secure browsing setting!” Sounds pretty alarming doesn’t it? Why does facebook default you to something that is not secure? Is somebody looking at your facebook profile right now? Have they stolen your password? Just what can they actually do?

In reality, facebook is no less secure than most sites you visit. Twitter, gmail (and other google services), tumblr, yahoo, etc. all do the same thing as facebook. The real danger is not really in having your account hacked. The real danger is the information you keep on facebook, or in any online account for that matter.

If someone were to hack into your facebook account, they wouldn’t be able to steal your password. They’d pretty much only get to drive your account for a bit — much like leaving yourself signed in at a public computer. But, on facebook, that could mean they figure out your full name, your date of birth, family member’s full names, and all sorts of other info about you. The kind of information that could be useful in an identity theft. Or the kind of information help them get past those security questions your online banking account is always asking you.

Hence, it’s a much better approach to be careful about the amount of information you put online. Because (as a general rule) you should always assume that almost anything you put online will be seen by someone else’s eyes sooner or later.

Update: Here’s another article describing this exact problem.

I remember one evening as a kid when my Dad came upstairs from our TV room. Earlier, my siblings had been watching a movie that, for whatever reason, they weren’t supposed to be watching. I think they had been told to go to bed, or something like that. Anyhow, he came upstairs with a huge grin on his face, carrying the plug to the TV. Just the plug. He had literally cut it off as a way of punishing us for watching too much TV. My sister cried. A lot.

Though it may not have seemed so at the time, it was probably one of the best things he could have done for us. Lucky (or maybe unlucky) for us, my Dad is an electrical engineer. He rigged up our TV’s power cord to a lock and key. When the key was in, the TV worked; when the key was out, the TV wouldn’t even turn on. It was a brilliant way for him to control how much TV we watched as a family without cutting us off completely. It taught me that TV is something to be controlled, not something we should let control us.

TV can be sort of like a drug to us. It rewards us in the short-term, but leaves us with long-term regrets. It can be addictive. It can lead to unhappiness. “OK,” you say, “this isn’t a big surprise. I’ve known this for a while.” True, but what I find interesting is that it doesn’t actually change our habits much. Even more interesting, though, is that we’ve had TV since 1927, and we’re only just discovering all the social and personal effects.

That kind of scares me.

Why?

Because the Internet is way more prevalent in our lives now, and we’ve only had it for about 30 years. How is it affecting us? How is social networking affecting us, like Facebook and Twitter? We can already see how it’s pulling us apart, and yet we do little to stop it.

Here’s a great article about how TV gives us a feeling of vicarious friendship through watching unrealistic images of groups of friends that spend all their time together. We want deep social interaction, but we turn to cheap imitations of this through Facebook and TV:

This decline in real friendships may account in part for the dramatic rise of virtual friendships like those on social-networking sites where being “friended” is less a sign of personal engagement than a quantitative measure of how many people your life has brushed and how many names you can collect, but this is friendship lite. Facebook, in fact, only underscores how much traditional friendship — friendship in which you meet, talk and share — has become an anachronism and how much being “friended” is an ironic term.

Perhaps we should take the advice of the first article and go back to reading books. They’re one of the few things untouched by the media and advertising — for a little while longer, at least.

Ever since I got a data plan with my Palm Pre, I have been a happy camper. I love having the answer to almost any question available right there in my pocket. It has become so useful that it’s basically replaced my laptop and desktop for home computer use. All my social networks are easily accessible, along with email, web, and a host of fun little games. It has kept me entertained for hours and hours.

With a phone that can do so much, you’d think I’d keep in touch more with my friends, right?

Not so much…

It’s not that I don’t keep in touch with them — I do — it’s just different. I’ve found I hardly ever use any of the minutes on my phone. Now, I’ve never been much of a phone person before, but I remember trying to keep myself within 300 anytime minutes on my old phone and struggling. My new plan is better (as far as minutes go), but I’m not sure I’d break my limit even without the unlimited night/weekend minutes. Why?

Because I either text or Facebook stalk or tweet at them.

Apparently it’s not just me either. We are turning more and more towards data usage over actual calls. More towards using the Internet to communicate instead of in-person communication.

There’s always two sides to this issue: It’s a good thing because we are more in touch than ever before, but bad because that type of communication can be pretty impersonal. The good can be pretty convincing though: I can keep up with all my friends that have moved away from Provo in a way I couldn’t before (+1 Internet). If I want to share something with all my friends, it’s easy to do (+1 Internet). Planning and event organizing is simplified (+1 Internet). I could mention several more.

Not being able to actually talk to my friends when I actually see them? Not cool (-10000 Internet).

What is it about being so connected and in touch with each other that inhibits us from being able to actually communicate?

It’s easy for me to forget that the Internet is a tool. Like phones, or old-fashioned letters. They are meant to help us communicate with others, but not for actually replacing them. If we let it, Facebook can quickly define a relationship, instead of supplementing it. Texting becomes the way to communicate instead of a way to communicate. And that warps our perceptions of people. Because too much is hidden by these communication methods.

The bottom line? Sometimes you need to actually visit these people you follow on Twitter or Facebook. Have a non-virtual chat. It’s pretty neat.

(Also, I write stuff like this a lot. Is it getting annoying? Does anybody still read this?)

Remember the cars from Minority Report? Yeah, the ones that drive themselves. Kinda like your own personal bus. Sounds like a good idea right?

Well, what if this became a reality within the next few years? Would you trust it?

According to the CVIS project, this could come sooner than we think. Although the CVIS project is not really an automated transportation system, it is working towards it. The basis of the project is to design mobile routers that can be placed along roadsides and provide all sorts of information for your car. Sort of an automotive internet, if you will. For example, you’re driving some where, and your car alerts you that there is traffic ahead and that you should slow down. Or perhaps you’re driving to a popular restaurant, and it is able to look up the closest available parking spot. Sounds pretty cool huh?

So how much further off are cars that drive themselves? We’ve been talking about it for years. Personally, I think the technology is more than there. But there’s so much more to making this a reality. There are big issues with deployment (no one can use it until it’s widespread), costs (both for cars and for the roadside systems), and the biggest of all — people. Will we actually trust it?

I’ve heard (and I’m sure you have as well) that for the most part, commercial airplanes fly themselves. Yet the airlines invest thousands in making sure there are qualified pilots on board. Why? The answer is not as clear as you might think. Yes, it’s good to have them there in case something goes wrong, but I bet that’s only part of the issue. I think they’re there to make us feel safe. Because the idea of a plane flying itself gives us the willies.

But maybe if it’d been proven, we’d trust something like that more. Or if there was a manual override — although what happens when people don’t actually learn to drive or fly anymore? Perhaps after extensive testing. Or maybe only in certain situations.

And so I’m curious: Would you trust the automotive internet? Would you really? And what would it take you to trust it? Do you think it’s a good idea?

Update: Thought of another good question while talking to my friend. Would you ever stick your kid in an automated car and let him go off by himself?