Going Offline

For the past two years we have all been strapped to our screens. It's not really the screens themselves, but rather the connections they enabled. Discouraged from gathering in person, we moved every activity to a virtual portal. Shopping? No going to an actual bricks and mortar establishment, just click and order anything from tuna fish to shampoo to underwear. Work? We always wondered what it would be like to work at home in our slippers, and now we know. School? Whether it was kindergarten, high school or college, students learned to get their teachers attention not by raising their hands but by clicking their mouse. It was the same for dating, playing, socializing, entertaining, you name it. Your only window to the world was the window not on your wall but on your desk.

And so being online became the only line. Online meant you were connected to a network which in turn connected you to everything else. To dwell in the modern world meant you had to be online to some degree. For some that meant simply sending emails or texts, reading the latest news and shopping via Amazon. For others it went a step further, from ordering food or movies, to engaging in group discussions with friends or coworkers. And for still others it meant spending a majority of time posting, reacting, creating, liking, TikToking - in short, doing not some things but all things online. It's a twist on the philosophical thought experiment of a tree falling in a forest: if you do something and don't post it on Instagram, did you actually do it? 

And for many that was right and good. To be offline was an error state. Offline meant not only that you were not connected, but that you were effectively out of the loop. And not just any loop, but every loop. Offline was a two-way street, meaning that not only that you couldn't be reached, but you couldn't reach out. You couldn't watch the same shows everyone was watching, couldn't eat the same foods everyone was eating, couldn't laugh at the same jokes everyone was laughing at. And so being offline was effectively dwelling in a digital Siberia, a hostile, uncomfortable environment to be avoided at all costs.

Or maybe not.

While some people relish living online, many do not. Or they enjoy it but find it too all-consuming and tiring. And so they look for opportunities to step back. Perhaps more accurately, they enjoy the benefits of connecting while at times preferring the relationship to be more asymmetrical, more take than give. So yes, use Google Maps to plot a hike, but then then download the trail map as a guide but not check emails along the way. Or yes, use Spa Finder to set up a date for a mani/pedi, but once there just listen to music vs. doom scrolling the news. Or perhaps hardest of all, step away from the streaming world and curl up with a cup of tea and a good book. (Yes, harder to do if the book is electronic and you are holding the iPad in your hands, but it is possible.)

Of course, most of us can't just go offline without some preparation. You need to find a break in your normal routine when it is permissible or possible to not be connected. Put another way, you need downtime, another word that in the absolute connotes the negative instead of the positive. But creating that space is what makes it possible to pause for moment and take stock in a non-connected way. So yes (deep breath), you need downtime to be able to go offline to reset yourself to go online. And yes, that phraseology owes a nod to the riff "Modern Man" by the great George Carlin: "I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading." 

The old language was the equally seemingly oxymoronic "unplug and recharge." The meaning was to step away from your usual day-to-day routine with the hope that a little break would give your Spidey-senses time to regenerate. But it's the same thing even if it makes no linguistic sense. Or once again in Carlin-speak: you want to be "in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar." 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to curl up with a warm Kindle. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.