I was famous last weekend.
Me and these other two tech tragics fasted from our fancy phones, Twitter, Facebook etc for a whole week and keep a diary of our inconveniences for this story in The Age. In the printed version they reprinted excerpts of our diaries.
Here's my complete, unedited diary.
This challenge is harder because I got a new replacement ipod the day before the challenge started. I love toys but the ipod is something that is always in my pocket.
Lucy taking my new Ipod from me this morning wasn’t fun. In fact I was begging to keep it. It was like the scene in Trainspotting when Renton’s parents lock him in his room to go cold turkey. Seriously.
This morning I spent an hour reading about ipads. It’s interesting because I can’t have one and can’t even turn on my iphone.
Listening to a cool band from the 1990’s I had completely forgotten about. I want to remind my mates about them but I can’t. (It was the shoegaze band, Medicine btw)
Lunch in a café. Watching two people on their laptops. One is downloading emojis for his iphone. Now he’s trying to get it to work. I know what he’s going through. Installing that stuff was hard. I have an urge to send a mate a text message made up entirely of emojis but I cant.
Riding my bike and hear the ding of my iphone go off in my bag. Somehow I feel good that I’m not allowed to look at it.
Lunch in café. I’m reading a JB catalogue. I need another new gadget for next week.
It’s not that I feel like I have to be “connected”. It’s just that I’ve over the years of blogging, facebook etc is that when I see something I now have an impulse to “share” it with everyone.
Today I bought a digital radio to listen to after my time away.
For me, everyday all day is like a primary school’s Show and Tell session.
I had to go shopping. I’ve realised that for the past 20 years, whenever I’ve been out alone at places like shopping centres I’ve always had my walkman on. This is the hardest part of the challenge. I don’t like the outside noise of rubbish FM radio, PA announcements and small talk chatter.
I feel like I need music or a podcast to ride above all this noise.
In Ikea it was amazing seeing how much people use their phones. Everyone is talking on their phones, taking photos and making notes. There’s even a guy having a video conference on his phone with his wife arguing about a tv cabinet. “You’re not showing me all the cabinets!” she screams down the line. “I am, I swear!” he pleads.
I would usually be one of them, taking photos of things to take home and talk about whether the blue bookshelf would look good in the lounge room. Today I’m just using a notepad and pen and really, that’s more than good enough.
I got a call from a friend on the home phone saying that my mates are missing me on the twitter and facebooks. They say they are thinking of starting up a facebook event celebrating my return.
At a comedy show. The comedian is talking about his iphone. Everyone talks about their iphone everywhere I go. Not having it makes you notice that everyone is obsessed with their little toys. At intermission, the crowd is lit up from people catching up with what has happened while their phones were off.
I’m with friends at a pub. My mates are showing camera phone photos to each other. I love showing off my stupid photos on my phone but I can’t.
It's nice not having to charge up a battery this morning before work.
There’s over 1000 tweets that I have missed. I won’t be catching up with them.
I’m getting used to this.
Broke. All I did was play a little game on my iphone. Does this make me a bad person? Also my girlfriend hid my ipod and Nintendo DS. I searched for them. Found them but resisted turning them on.
My no technology diary is full of self portraits that I have drawn when I would have usually been playing with apps or my Nintendo DS.
Going to a wedding with some friends tonight. This is the biggest challenge. Some friends are picking us up from a bar in the taxi on the way to the wedding. Seems easy enough. We go to the bar at a certain time and they drive by. End of story. But no. They are confused about where the bar is. The taxi driver hasn’t got a clue but it should be simple. My mates call my girlfriend ASKING FOR US TO CHECKIN ON FOURSQUARE SO THEY CAN FIND US OR AT LEAST GIVE US A GPS REFERENCE.
On the subject of Foursquare. I hope when I come back from my time away I’m still “Mayor of the MCG”.
At the wedding with my mates they spend a lot of time looking down at their iphones. Apparently they’re tweeting everything that is happening at the wedding when they’re not tweeting.
The week is over. I’m relieved. I just want to listen to my ipod. It’s not that I missed not having my phone. It was the music I missed most. I had a month without a iphone earlier this year when I was on an overseas trip. That wasn’t too bad but being home with all the technology, social media rubbish etc around me the temptation really annoyed me. Also I miss telling people on my blogs/twitter/facebook etc about funny stuff I see on the street or hear on the news.
I really missed my chance to Show and Tell.
