“We are assholes and we have the little computers in our pockets to thank for it.” There's No Romance in a Mouse Click — Curious Rat.

“It will be very slow but noble television,” Norway enjoys 12-hour TV special of a fireplace, with commentary – Boing Boing.

It’s an era of controlled deprivations and detoxification, of fasts and cleanses. Perhaps everyone should make a weekly ritual of twenty-four hours of undocumented life. Periods of time in which memory must do all the heavy lifting, or none of it, as it chooses, the consequences being what they may be. No phone, no eclipse glasses to mitigate the intensity of what lies before you. The only options are appetite, experience, memory, and later, if so inclined, writing it down via Saying Goodbye to Now: How Do iPhone Photos Impact Our Experience? : The New Yorker.

With the internet, twitter, and texting we now have almost instant gratification of our desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type it into google. What to see what your friends are up to? Go to twitter or facebook. We get into a dopamine induced loop… dopamine starts us seeking, then we get rewarded for the seeking which makes us seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, stop checking our cell phones to see if we have a message or a new text. via 100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes You Addicted…

Step 1. I’m going to take a good, long hard look at what I use and determine what’s working for me. Step 2. I’m not going to change any of that. Step 3. I’m going to take all that time that would be spent experimenting and use it to actually do stuff. via My Radical Productivity Experiment — A Better Mess.

“We’re a tribe, we quiet ones, we readers and thinkers and letter writers, we daydreamers and gazers out of windows. We are a civil people, courteous to excess, who disdain displays of anger as childish and embarrassing. But the Quiet Car is our territory, the last reservation to which we’ve been driven. And we can be pushed too far.” via The Quiet Ones – NYTimes.com.

Now I want to see the internet at a distance. By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I’m so “adept” at the internet that I’ve found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I’m pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn’t belong. — Paul Miller in I'm leaving the internet for a year | The Verge. Saying no is saying yes to other things…

“We need to take a collective step back and wonder: is this really what’s best for each of us?” From Disconnected ◇ notes.unwieldy. Yes. Indeed we do. (via Opt-Out)