
Off the Grid - decasteve
http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/04/off-the-grid/
======
uhtred
It's interesting that I was at an itunes free gig in London back in 2010 at
the Camden Roundhouse (band was Bombay Bicycle Club and they were very good),
and Stephen Fry made a pre gig speech (obviously paid by Apple) to say how
marvellous the iphone was and how although some people criticise social media
, it is a marvellous thing that helps people feel less lonely, amongst other
things (and the iphone helps people stay connected to this social media when
on the go). I wonder if he truly believed that then, or was just saying so for
Apple's sake. Either way, let's assume he believed it; and so I guess in 2010
it was all still rather new. Now he, like many of us, have grown very tired
and cynical of it all. I agree with a lot he is saying in this post. The
internet has been hijacked by big money and corporations. I personally am
utterly fed up with waiting for web pages to load, unable to read the content
because it keeps shifting around the page while another shitty targeted ad
gets inserted. And then I realise the content was trash anyway; just more
shallow, "read this in 2 minutes" bullshit that gets churned out because the
authors know we have lost our ability to stay focused on one thing long enough
to read anything substantial and genuinely informative.

~~~
DanBC
Stephen Fry has been an early adopter of technology for many years.

He and Douglas Adams were the first people in the UK to get Apple Macs, for
example. He was the first person to apply for a .uk domain name

~~~
mattl
> He was the first person to apply for a .uk domain name

Is a little misleading. He was the first person to use the modern, nonprefixed
uk domain but not the first person to apply for a .uk domain back in the day.

------
darkclarity
I have gone through a similar phase. Got rid of social media, switched back to
a feature phone, am reading real books, listening to music on physical media,
using cash where possible and whatever else.

The Internet has gone from a place with a high barrier of entry (and the
interesting characters that self selected for that barrier), to an all
encompassing entity with a load of moralisers, businesses and governments
fighting over the ability to call the shots.

In its current state, I think it's better to take a step back. View the
Internet as an occasional tool for getting things done, rather than a place to
live within and rely upon. Let the masses have their addictions fulfilled,
while technology enthusiasts move on and enjoy real life.

~~~
debacle
What feature phone are you using? For the life of me I can't find one these
days that isn't a cheap piece of crap.

~~~
arximboldi
I recently got a Nokia 130 because I lost my old phone. Dunno if it goes above
your "piece of crap" line but it serves very well my needs.

~~~
sanoli
I use a Samsung flip phone. I still prefer the flip ergonomics to a touch-
screen one (for ordinary voice call use obviously). Someone calls me, I pick
up the phone, flip it open to answer if I want to, talk, close it to end the
call, all with one hand, without having to even look at the thing (I can check
the outside lcd to see who it is before answering it also). When I want to
call someone (I only call about 5 people regularly (wife, mom, dad, sister,
closest friends), I just flip it open and press the corresponding speed dial
button. For this kind of use, a touch screen doesn't come close.

------
nadam
As someone who uses the internet in a healthy way and healthy dose, i think
this article is like when an (former?) alcoholic suggests to all the people to
not even drink one beer occasionally. Seriously why should I not use email to
communicate with people far away from me on interesting topics? Why would I
not look up things in Wikipedia? Why would I not look at Fecebook once a day
for 2 minutes to see whether there is something extra with my IRL friends and
relatives?

~~~
lkozma
you can of course use it as much as you want -- but I thing the broader point
of the author holds: for a generation that is supposed to be rebellious, there
is a surprising amount of conformism in accepting these tools as something
that need to be used all the time.

~~~
clock_tower
It's best to think neither in terms of rebelliousness nor conformism, but in
terms of right and wrong -- the standards by which we determine whether
rebellion, or conformism, or withdrawal, or some other act are appropriate.
Aging hippies and aging squares are both stopped clocks, wrong at least as
often as they're right...

That said, I'm with the author in one respect: I don't have a Facebook account
and never will. Constant connectedness is the enemy of deep understanding of
the world -- although drugs, pinball machines, and basking in one's alleged
superiority to the squares are also its enemies.

------
return0
Why do people feel like FB and messengers are the entire "Grid"? You can go
off social networks and still enjoy the marvel that is the internet (it works
for me). My guess is that people develop a genuine addiction to FB and need to
avoid all temptation for a while. Going offline for a longer than that is not
a good idea though.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "My guess is that people develop a genuine addiction to FB and need to
avoid all temptation for a while. Going offline for a longer than that is not
a good idea though."

Maybe it is. Look at it like any other addiction. If you're addicted to
alcohol you don't stop for a while that start and hope you can drink in
moderation. I guess a better analogy might be an alcoholic who can go into a
bar and not drink. I guess there are a lot of people who can do that but for
others the temptation can be too much. I know personally I've purged social
media accounts several times only to start them up again 6 months later.

~~~
Joof
I haven't used Facebook or similar for several years. I still use HN though,
but it at least FEELS healthier.

------
stcredzero
_These days, while there may be much talk of digital connection being a civil
right, that doesn’t make it a civic duty, or a legal compulsion._

Social media tries to use it as a "civic compulsion." They say: Hew to our
ideology, or you're not allowed to have an online presence. We will shame and
destroy your online persona. So much of our culture and commerce is online and
digital, this may well feel like banishment to many.

The same progressive movements that railed against the thought control,
coercive pressure, and shaming methods of the church and the old cultural
establishment have sprouted online movements of predominantly young people who
use silencing tactics, banishment from civic organizations, and coercive
shaming to further their agenda.

I find this a damn shame, because I count myself as a progressive and across
the long arc of history, this only delays substantive progress. It's like
trying to invade and occupy a country by holding land with troops. It's
expensive, causes great collateral damage, and it turns many potential allies
against you. It can "work," but only when you utterly rout the opposition, and
even then, it often just plants the seeds for the next set of conflicts.

True activism can't just stop at demonstrations and resignations. It doesn't
stop with committees or legislation or court cases. The end goal is to win
hearts and minds. Beware of those who say they're winning hearts and minds,
but backing it up with coercion. Beware of power, even limited contextual
power. Power that lacks self awareness can be locally perilous.

(Really, is that stuff really about justice, or is it about the pleasure of
watching someone get their comeuppance? And has our culture degraded to the
point where a large fraction of intellectuals are unaware of the difference?)

------
jgrahamc
The other day I suddenly remembered the door of my college room. Since I was
at university pre-Internet, pre-mobile phones there was a piece of paper and a
pencil on the door so that people who came round to find me could leave a
message... by writing on the door.

~~~
ant6n
Great idea for a social network. Just write on someone's door.

~~~
StavrosK
Too skeuomorphic.

~~~
ant6n
Skeuomorphism is coming back. Like Vinyl.

~~~
ak39
Baudrillard would have had fun with that comment!

------
phillipamann
This article speaks to me and what I've been preaching to others for a while
now. I got high speed internet in 1999. I was 13 years old. I am now 29 on the
cusp of 30 and I think that this experiment has been detrimental to me rather
than beneficial. I am currently in the process of doing what Fry talks about.
While I can not be absolute and still want to visit some sites and some
communities, I am trying to treat each website as if it were a magazine
subscription or something I have to buy and own.

I like to live a minimalist lifestyle at home and prefer owning as few things
as possible. I know many others feel this way too. However, with the internet
and computing, ownership is abstract. I become overwhelmed and anxious under
the deluge of files, apps, notifications, settings, and upkeep required for it
all. I know I am not alone in this. Below is a quotation I loved from Deep
Work by Cal Newport:

"These services aren’t necessarily, as advertised, the lifeblood of our modern
connected world. They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded
lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell
your personal information and attention to advertisers. They can be fun, but
in the scheme of your life and what you want to accomplish, they’re a
lightweight whimsy, one unimportant distraction among many threatening to
derail you from something deeper. Or maybe social media tools are at the core
of your existence. You won’t know either way until you sample life without
them."

Newport, Cal (2016-01-05). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a
Distracted World (p. 209). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

~~~
vasilipupkin
by what algorithm have you determined that it has been detrimental? how do you
know that algorithm is accurate?

~~~
phillipamann
I did this by reflecting on my own life. I reflected on my habits and
behaviors. I thought about how my life was before and after this. I thought
about this even more compared to when I became a smartphone owner and when I
was not a smart phone owner. There is no algorithm for this. There is no
correct answer and that's the point. Some people love being connected to 10
social networks and constantly checking them. Some people don't. I am of the
later group.

~~~
vasilipupkin
being connected to 10 networks and constantly checking on them is one extreme.
Another extreme is claiming you would have been better off without broadband.
I can't speak for you, of course, but most people would probably be better off
without extremes

------
squeaky-clean
I agree that most of us should be "off the grid" more than we are, but not for
any of the reasons he suggests. There's no real reasoning to this argument,
just "It used to be like X before the internet, so the internet is bad." But
with no reasons why X is good, as if it's obvious, but the modern ways seem
better to me.

> Well maybe they should consider this for a moment. Who most wants you to
> stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The
> advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies – once they distrusted it, now
> they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message
> you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your
> school. Advertisers.

Really? "The man wants you on the internet, so you should stop!" If you avoid
the internet just because of this, you're still letting the advertisers, your
boss, "the man" make your decisions for you, rather than coming to your own
conclusions..

> Remembering what I was like at fifteen, I wriggle pleasurably at the thought
> of how it would feel in 2016 to tell a teacher that, no, I couldn’t possibly
> ‘e-mail’ my homework, because I don’t have e-mail:

> ‘I’m not on your email, miss/sir.’

> ‘Don’t be absurd, Stephen. Email me the essay as soon as possible.’

A bit of a strawman here, isn't it? In what situation would a teacher ever
demand you send an assignment ASAP instead of on the assigned due date? And if
it's because you've missed the due date, what right do you have to act
difficult and decide the medium over which you turn it in? Either accept the
failed grade, or play by the rules of the person who is accommodating you.

Self control when it comes to technology is great and all, and if you feel you
need or want less than the average person, that's fine. But thinking you're
better than everyone else because you refuse to use a tool some people use
incorrectly?

~~~
pharke
The article seems to be about what he imagines a young person of today would
do if they wanted to affect a counter cultural lifestyle. Sticking it to the
man (advertisers, your boss, parents, etc.) and throwing common mediums and
traditions out the window to freak out the normies. He's not saying the old
way was better, he goes to lengths to point that out when he says:

>This is just maudlin, nostalgic mush. You can’t go back. But all my
imagination can do when picturing a life off the grid is summon up the life I
had before the grid existed, so I cannot help being retrospective.

He's using the past way of life as a framework to build his vision on, not as
the desired outcome. The imagined exchange with a teacher is equally fanciful
but serves the point of illustrating a conflict between a young person and an
establishment figure. A failed grade would be of no consequence here since it
is certainly an expected response from someone in a position of power
attempting to force you into conformity... missing this point is telling of
your misunderstanding of the article so I think I'll leave it at that.

------
grillvogel
"Because the bombardment of pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic
humans very quickly, spurious humans—as fake as the data pressing at them from
all sides. My two topics are really one topic; they unite at this point. Fake
realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake
realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into
forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake
realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large
version of Disneyland. You can have the Pirate Ride or the Lincoln Simulacrum
or Mr. Toad's Wild Ride—you can have all of them, but none is true." \- PKD

edit: this is from
[http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm](http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm)

~~~
stuartaxelowen
And what is true?

~~~
clock_tower
Well, it's true that if you don't eat you'll die of starvation. (Or, if you
happen to be in a computer simulation at the moment, that if you don't run
through the acts which the simulation reckons as simulating eating, you'll end
up in the state which the simulation reckons as dead, after having been in the
state that the simulation reckons as starving -- which is the same thing from
your perspective.) Perhaps something larger can be built out from there.

I think that what RKD is saying (whoever he is) is that large-scale
manufacturing, plus a healthy dose of cheap plastics, have cut us off from
physical construction and from the constrained but rather satisfying (at least
when contemplated in hindsight) way of how we used to live. That, and he read
enough _Dune_ that he's now talking like a Bene Gesserit...

~~~
grillvogel
>RKD is saying (whoever he is)

Philip K Dick. He wrote this essay back in the 70s and was talking about what
you mention as well as the impact of things like TV but I think it is even
more relevant in the internet age. Based on the rest of your comment I think
you'd enjoy his work.

~~~
clock_tower
Interesting. I keep hearing that name, and probably will look him up...

------
scotchmi_st
"Those very politicians, advertisers, media moguls, corporates and journalists
who thought the internet a passing fad have moved in and grabbed the land.
They have all the reach, scope, power and ‘social bandwidth’ there is.
Everyone else is squeezed out — given little hutches, plastic megaphones and a
pretence of autonomy and connectivity. No wonder so many have become so rude,
resentful, threatening and unkind.

The radical alternative now must be to jack out of the matrix, to go off the
grid."

This is awfully regressive, but not only that; it's also foolish. If his point
is that by going 'Off The Grid' you can escape these people, he's out of luck-
these people are AFK __as well as __online. Try walking through a major city
without seeing a single advert.

If you want to get away from all the shit on the internet, the only way is
forwards, not backwards.

------
yarou
When I was a youngin' browsing BBSes in the 90s, I remember distinctly
encountering a text guide to "the art of disappearing", essentially getting
off the grid as Stephen Fry mentions. It involved a whole bunch of seemingly
paranoid steps, like burning your passport, and booking your flight (one-way)
with cash. I also remember thinking to myself how silly the whole concept was
- why would I ever want to do something like that?

These days, I'm realizing more and more that it doesn't sound that crazy in
this increasingly dystopian world.

~~~
lkozma
It might have been this one, the text you are referring to:

[http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm](http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm)

------
0xffff2
>They couldn’t force me to have an online presence after all.

I don't know where he gets this idea. Both the Comp. Sci. and Engineering
schools at my university require that all students have a laptop capable of
running software related to the coursework (financial aid is available
specifically to help meet this requirement). The university also supplies
plenty of computer labs. If I insisted on turning in all assignments on paper,
I would be laughed at and given failing grades until I was kicked out of
school.

The modern world absolutely can and will force you to have an online presence.

~~~
ChrisLTD
University itself is elective, no?

------
unwind
Meta: I think the "Stephen Fry" in the title is very redundant, considering
the domain.

If it really has to be there, it would (to my eye) look better to lead with
it, i.e. "Stephen Fry: Off the Grid".

------
stuartmalcolm
Am I the only one struck by the irony of an advert for his book in the middle
of this post?

~~~
sk8ingdom
I've started to give a pass on this sort of thing. A lot of time the author
doesn't have direct control over the publishing medium. The text is Stephen
Fry's, but the site design, ads, system administration, url, etc. are likely
all managed by someone else.

Journalists similarly shouldn't be held accountable for the ads that appear
next to their articles in magazines or the local paper no matter how ironic.

The fact that there IS an ad in the middle of his tirade probably illustrates
his point that "the corporation" has infiltrated every facet of our lives.

~~~
hundchenkatze
Well, in this case the publishing medium is presumably owned/controlled by him
since it's posted on [http://www.stephenfry.com](http://www.stephenfry.com)

While he may not have the knowledge to modify the site himself, he could tell
the people he's paying to remove the ad. It's most likely the case that he
wants the ad.

------
patcon
I noticed myself being just a tiny bit less interested in labouring through
the full article knowing that nothing I or anyone else expressed about it
after the fact would ever make it to Stephen's attention. The tantalizing idea
of a comment affecting an author (no matter how small that chance) definitely
plays into my consumption.

It makes me wonder whether a better approach to disconnecting is to set
quotas, essentially saying something like "I would like 2 tweets and 1 blog
comment to make it to my attention daily -- hide everything else from me for
my own sanity."

------
coldtea
> _They have been given, willy nilly, demographic tags like ‘millennial’,
> ‘post-millennial’, ‘Generation Z’, ‘i-Gen’ — not out of anybody’s acute
> cultural observation, sympathy or understanding but either to bulk up a
> HuffPo article or to delineate convenient advertising categories, within
> which many sub-categories can be established. You are not a person, you are
> an algorithmic assumption, a mould into which hot selling-jelly may be
> poured._

Well, obviously, and for every generalization concerning a whole generation,
you're not, and you're not supposed to be, a person. There's a time to talk of
people individually and as persons (e.g. in personal relationships, workplace,
etc.) and times to generalize and talk about their collective patterns of
behavior.

And those names are not always coming from journalist hacks without "acute
cultural observation, sympathy or understanding" either. E.g. "Generation X"
came from a member of said generation itself, Douglas Copland, trying to
describe how it is for him and his friends.

In any case, "Generation ___" is just a convenient handle to talk about many
people together -- its usefulness comes from whether it describes something
statistically useful, not from whether it caters to the individuality of each
unique snowflake person (and of course most just delude themselves that they
are that, while following very similar paths with their generation for most
things).

> _my proudest boast would be: ‘My friends and I, we disappeared ourselves. No
> social media, no email, no chat, no wifi, no selfies, no SMS, no
> smartphones. We did it. We did this thing. We Got Off The Grid._

I'd say this again underestimates how many people are "off the grid" (even if
they have internet at home) and don't participate in the whole social
media/chat/selfies/etc thing.

------
ablation
Goodness me, that's a lot of bloviation. I think there's a point buried in
there somewhere that has been made far more succinctly by a lot of other
people.

~~~
RivieraKid
I usually think the same for vast majority of stuff on HN, i.e. most articles
could be cut down to one or two paragraphs with little value lost, but...
There are generally two reasons why I read - to extract information and for
the experience of reading. Stephen Fry's blog is one of the rare cases where I
just enjoy the writing and the information value doesn't really matter.

~~~
coldtea
> _I usually think the same for vast majority of stuff on HN, i.e. most
> articles could be cut down to one or two paragraphs with little value lost,_

Maybe life too.

Instead of going through this whole redundant process of living through it, we
could just be given some 10 word summary, like e.g.:

"There was some fun, some sadness, a few regrets, a couple profound
experiences, a lot of boredom, quite some pain, mostly ok, and then you died".

~~~
RivieraKid
That analogy doesn't make much sense...

~~~
coldtea
Here's another way to put it:

"I have heard many People say, 'Give me the Ideas. It is no matter what Words
you put them into.' To this I reply, Ideas cannot be Given but in their
minutely Appropriate Words."

\- William Blake

~~~
RivieraKid
Oh ok, I get the point... But for a lot of articles it seems that 90% of the
value can be conveyed with 10% of the length, so I usually just quickly skim
it - unless it's the type of text where the value is in the experience of
reading and not information (stories, poems, ...).

~~~
coldtea
I guess that can be true for technical articles the most (e.g. just get to the
instructions, numbers, results etc), but probably not as easily for things
like this Fry post.

~~~
RivieraKid
Yeah, that was my point, that this desn't apply for Fry's writing.

------
alva
"The internet, as opposed to AOL and the others, was like a great city. It
certainly had slums and red-light districts and places you wouldn’t want to
visit after night, but the museums, ... streets were packed with excitement. "

This memory of the internet still lives. There are many nooks and crannies
that are hard to find as they do not show up on facebook, reddit etc. Lots of
independent, wacky, controversial, illegal and subversive sites are alive and
kicking.

In the earlier days, I suppose due to lack of volume, it was a lot easier to
find these places.

------
SpeakMouthWords
The good folks of tumblr have a succinct counter-argument to suggestions like
this. It is, and I quote:

"durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch"

~~~
raverbashing
I kind of agree

"Not having an online presence" makes as much sense as "not having a presence
at the pub" or "refusing to talk to people as a principle - isn't that so
'awesome'?"

It's fine, you don't need to be on every silly new 2.0 dot com, no issue
there.

But you're shutting yourself out of a means of communication with other
people. The fact that it involved technology is a _detail_

You can go to the pub and not drink, you can use FB with a fake name and not
do anything with it and you can choose an email provider that suits you, but
shutting yourself out does not make sense

~~~
trentmb
> "Not having an online presence" makes as much sense as "not having a
> presence at the pub"

Not quite- if I don't make it to the pub one night, people just brush it off
and think "I'll talk to him next time."

People seem much more vitriolic if I don't respond to whatever internet/text
message they sent with near immediacy- because it's always available.

It seems like there's a shut-off valve with the pub, or a land-line and
answering machine- not so with facebook, texting, what have you.

~~~
raverbashing
> if I don't respond to whatever internet/text message they sent with near
> immediacy- because it's always available

I have to agree with you on this one. But I believe it suffices to say that
no, you're not looking at email/fb/whatsapp/whatever all the time (and acting
like that)

------
ascorbic
It's not surprising he'd want to turn his back on social media after the
(justifiable) kicking he took over this:
[http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/14/stephen-
fry-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/14/stephen-fry-sorry-
for-telling-pitying-abuse-victims-to-grow-up)

~~~
coldtea
Justifiable? Based on what he actually said? -- there's an accurate
transcription down in the link.

~~~
ascorbic
“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in
that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self-pity gets none
of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.”

The 58-year-old went on to say: “Grow up.”

So, yes.

~~~
pharke
Let's take an ounce of effort to post the whole quote shall we?

Speaking to the US TV show The Rubin Report about campus free speech, safe
spaces and trigger warnings on literature.

"In terms of how they think, they can’t bear complexity. The idea that things
aren’t easy to understand, they want to be told, or they want to be able to
decide and say, ‘This is good and this is bad,’ and anything that conflicts
with that is not to be borne.

There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even
considered a rape, if you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch
Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t
read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger
something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you
in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry.

It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in
that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of
my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of
it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The
irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Just grow up.”

Context matters, you can dice up anyone's words to make them say what you like
but it doesn't prove a point, it's still a deception, and you're still doing
everyone the disservice of assuming that you know better than they do to make
up their minds for them. Grow up.

~~~
zwischenzug
This from a man who described in great detail his near-suicide experience
following the 'Cell Mates' breakdown? What was that if not self-pity? Should
we have felt no sympathy for him? Or is that too complex?

I wouldn't take any so-called wisdom from this man.

~~~
coldtea
> _This from a man who described in great detail his near-suicide experience
> following the 'Cell Mates' breakdown? What was that if not self-pity?_

So?

That would only prove he can wallow in self-pity too.

Which he has admitted already anyway, and condemned even in himself.

It certainly doesn't prove that self-pity is not as bad as he says.

So he is right. As for him doing it, it doesn't even make him a hypocrite
(since he admits it) -- just fallible.

Like an ex (or even current) drug addict sincerely warning people that drugs
are bad and that they shouldn't do them.

Not only are they right -- but they also speak from personal experience.

~~~
zwischenzug
It behooves him to be more empathetic, especially if he's suffered from the
same difficulties and he's speaking out in public about it.

------
boznz
Agree with a lot of this, however it is all about balance and moderation I'm
not sure going all the way makes you a better person or gives you a better
lifestyle.

email is fine once you have filtered out all the spam and dicks who put
everyone on cc.

I love music, but I wont be going back to vinal anytime soon, my mp3
collection is fine and much more convenient. Yes MP3 may have cheapened music
and there maybe something about removing it from the sleeve, putting it on the
turntable and turning it over after 20 minutes but that person is not me.

Same with books, I love reading books, but I am as happy (if not more happy)
to do it on a kindle as a 'real' book from the library.

A cell phone is convenient if left on silent or turned off when in company and
not continuously checked

I would still want google and wikipedia to do my job and I would still want
hackernews to ensure I can see and click on articles like Mr Frys if I so
desire, again these should be on-demand not continuous.

I have some beautiful countryside outside my door and I am very happy to step
away from all this and into it as often as I can.

------
pdkl95
> I would feel that it had connected far more and with far greater purpose and
> meaning.

One of the better discussions of this topic is Vi Hart's explanation[1] of
Edmund Snow Carpenter's[2] "They Became What They Beheld".

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-
Jjvqu3U4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4)

[2] almost certainly written with Marshall McLuhan

------
jasonkostempski
I've been trying to do this and as of this week, HN and stackexchage are the
last social accounts I have but only because I can't find a way to delete
them. I could just log out and walk away but it feels like there's no closure
that way. Anyone know of a way to close an HN account?

~~~
coldpie
Does HN count as "social"? It feels more like an Internet forum to me. I guess
you're using your real name here, but you don't have to. I don't know anyone
socially who I would expect to find on here.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I guess I wouldn't count it as "social" either but it's definitely "jacked
in", maybe a little more so for me since I use my real name.

------
llamataboot
I think we'll look back on maybe the 10 years previous to this and the 10
years after this as the years where we didn't really know how to handle all
the information and connectivity we were barraged with because our brains
simply didn't evolve for such a thing (and it's about to get a lot more
interesting with VR/AR) -- the dopamine hit of MORE INFO MORE INFO MORE INFO
makes sense in an information-scarce world. No longer. I suspect our brains
will adapt rather quickly, for those of us born into it. For those of us over
age 25 or so, I suspect we'll always have twitches of addiction and nostalgia
for being off grid.

------
betteryeti
Longtime listener, first-time caller here. Okay, maybe this is just a naive
idea, but in Fry's spirit of going-backward-to-go-forward, I think that a very
subversive, Internet-thwarting tech would be a device that did point-to-point
communication (ie., like ham-radio packet broadcast). Like, go to place X,
tune into your point-to-point USB dongle and tune in to the chatter --
constrained by the broadcast range of the device's power and antenna. You'd
have the efficiencies of a social networking system paired with the place-ness
of a particular physical location. This would tend, I imagine, to link people
up IRL after they "sniffed" each other electronically to determine whether
they were same tribe/interest/affinity/perversion/whatever. From there, they
could pursue the more authentic/place-based/dreamy/serendipitous youth more
resonant with what Fry experienced in his youth. And since the communication
is point-to-point with no IP address or Internet implied, no
advertiser/analytics authority could interpose itself in those conversations.

Is that an insane idea?

------
ogdoad
>It is not about the numbers. It is _never_ about the numbers. Don’t let them
tell you otherwise.

The ad midway probably has something to do with numbers, where 10,000 is
better than 100.

------
vinceguidry
What in the world would be the point of really going off the nets? I honestly
can't see the point. It's so easy to pick and choose how you want to interact
with the online world. A few years ago, not having a Facebook was like living
in a cave in the woods. Now? All my friends are on Facebook, but very few of
them participate. It's been relegated to mere entertainment. I can go days
without checking it.

A reporter asked a Girl Scout whether the cookies they were selling were
healthy. She just said, "Don't eat the whole box."

Technology is like relationships, they get better after you develop good
boundaries. If you can't trust yourself with cookies, don't keep cookies in
the house. But really, you should just work on not being a slave to food. Or
Facebook.

Nothing about technology actually keeps you from interacting more deeply with
others. You do that to yourself. You can't blame food for making you fat.

------
RivieraKid
He's such an amazingly good writer.

~~~
noufalibrahim
I like his "Ode less travelled" a lot but his other works of fiction not so
much. And his blog posts (including this one) seem to be a few straightforward
points blown up into an essay. I realise that he enjoys language for it's own
sake. I do too in a much lesser way but his style simply doesn't resonate with
me.

------
dajohnson89
That's cute, he thinks a student in today's world can be successful without
the Internet.

~~~
Jtsummers
Why not? Assuming access to books (library, bookstores) and journals via a
library (should be present in most schools or within a school district, decent
libraries in my rather small town), a student would be in the same situation
as most pre-2000 students, many of whom succeeded just fine.

~~~
tomrod
Pre-2000 students had access to card catalogs within the library. Most
libraries nowadays use the Internet to support their many locations'
cataglogs.

~~~
nazgob
Never seen a library without a computer onsite. Most of the time you can use
it only to search for books etc.

~~~
tomrod
Agreed. Most library systems I've come across have their catalog servers
located elsewhere, except for very small community libraries. (Granted, this
is the worst type of data: anecdata).

------
JaggerFoo
So Mr. Fry is assuming that 15 year old boys would be willing to give up the
treasure trove of Porn that is available to them via the technology he suggest
they spurn.

A very unrealistic assumption.

------
patcon
> I live in a world without Facebook, and now without Twitter. I manage to
> survive too without Kiki, Snapchat, Viber, Telegram, _Signal_ and the rest
> of them. _I haven’t yet learned to cope without iMessage and SMS._

I respect what he's getting at, but this is all sorts of backwards for someone
who wrote an earlier paragraph about escaping the eye of advertisers (and
presumably surveillance)

------
tmaly
I like his spin on it. The internet has become a ton of noise and walled
gardens. I initially dropped off the social media platforms, but then I re-
joined under anonymous names.

During my off-grid time, I found I was more productive in terms of thinking
and getting my side projects done.

I was able to read more paper books as well as just enjoy life and nature.

------
Freak_NL

         Logan’s Run, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451
    

Lovely films. Something about the pacing or the cinematography of the films
from that era appeals to me.

Ah… Zardoz… Nothing beats Sean Connery running around in weird sci-fi shorts.
Also, Beethoven.

------
Falcon9
"They couldn’t force me to have an online presence after all."

Read your terms of enlistment, soldier. They can and they do.

------
kbart
Rants away (though I agree with some points), it's a nice summary of Internet
history.

------
sanoli
email is awesome, but I do miss receiving long letters from friends far away.
Man, do I miss that. I only have two friends left who still write letters. I
would give many parts of the internet to have that back.

------
chriswarbo
I think this makes some very good points, but conflates too many things as
being "the grid" or "the internet [sic]". Yes, advertisers, HR departments,
parents, etc. like people to use Web sites to look at ads, provide a work
history/CV/photographic evidence of pasttimes, update a beacon with their
current whereabouts, etc. but those are societal things which have basically
nothing to do with the technology. Paper and ink are just as tainted with
advertising, corporate homogenisation, familial pings, etc.

How does handing in an essay on paper 'fight the power'? Paper is just as
corrupted as the Web. Anecdote: a couple of years ago, before a long coach
journey, I decided to buy a pen and paper so I could pass the time writing,
drawing, mathematical playing, etc. In the centre of a large city (Birmingham,
UK) it took me about half an hour to find anywhere which sold blank paper
rather than pre-printed magazines/newspapers/books/etc. (I eventually found
some in Poundland; an underrated shop IMHO). I nearly missed the coach.

Rejecting technologies, like email, is self-flagellation. Whether a teacher
can or can't force a student to have an email address is irrelevant; all
that's needed is to SMTP the server with a syntactically-valid FROM address,
like "thisisnotarealaddress@example.com". There is no requirement for that
address to even resolve, let alone for it to accept mail and make it available
to you. So what if you get marked as spam, that's always a hazard even from
established providers.

Likewise, if someone wants to make something available _to_ you via email,
there's nothing stopping the use of a one-time-only address, e.g.
mailinator.com or something similar with a password, that disappears after 24
hours.

To refuse email in such a way is like refusing to write English in left-to-
right order; or using a fountain pen full of invisible ink: it's petty and
silly, which is fine if that's your intention, but as a serious statement it
achieves nothing.

In contrast, refusing control by "The Corporation" is definitely a Good Thing
(TM). It's why I've never used Facebook, Bebo, or any of those other register-
to-view silos and never will. It's why I deleted my Twitter account after
their chilling meeting with the UK government after the 2011 riots. It's why I
host my own blog, Git repos and anything else I would miss if it were deleted.
It's why I use only FOSS software, on machines which require no driver blobs
or proprietary BIOS (except for the GSM driver on my OpenMoko; I'd be glad to
hear of any alternatives). It's why I download videos from YouTube, iPlayer,
etc. to watch in the ways that I want to (which may be several decades after
those services collapse). It's why I use ad blockers, NoScript, hosts file
blacklists, etc. It's why I only turn on my smartphone (OpenMoko running
Debian) occasionally, when someone asks me to expect a message from them. And
so on.

It's often said that technology is neither good nor bad, only its uses are.
Ignoring the "bad" uses of technology doesn't require abandoning the
technology itself. The article decries "digging up Wikipedia and planting
cabbages over it", but there are also many other areas of the Web which aren't
"bullying and wheedling and neediness.. invisible selling... loveless flirting
and cowardly mocking... unbearable long silences and the ceaseless screaming
chatter... vengeful rivalries... frenzied desperation and ...wrenching
loneliness.". Does "jacking out" make those things stop? No, it's just
ignoring them. So why not just ignore them _without_ "jacking out"?

Did the youth of the 1950s rebel against authority by hammering on harsichords
in their stagecoaches? No, they blared the sound of electric guitars,
transmitted via radio, from cars. Refusing to conform to the new normal by
staying with the old normal isn't being rebellious; being rebellious is using
the new to create some unfathomable anithesis of normal. That's what I love
about Open Source, on top of the fundamental rights provided by Free Software:
the bazaars surrounding the cathedrals. Yes, FOSS gives us LibreOffice to file
our tax returns; but it also lets us connect a GPU-backed deep learning
library to a 3D-printed robots, via software-defined radio running on openly-
programmed FPGAs, so we can.... I don't know, because it's so new!

When studying Physics as an undergraduate, our lab sessions gave training on
how to analyse experimental results using Microsoft Excel. I refused to
participate, claiming that the scientific process should not be beholden to
the unknown inner workings of a proprietary, black-box application with an
exclusionary EULA and known bugs. I performed all of the required analysis on
the course using Gnumeric and Python instead. Whilst still quite petty, I
still believe that was still a far stronger message than not using email from
a residence with broadband-connected computers.

------
anticitizen
For some reason it delights me that Stephen Fry has read William Gibson.

------
awinter-py
hadn't heard of savonarola. there are no github matches for this so if
someone's looking for a cool project name, now's your chance

------
rayascott
Well isn't it ironic, don't you think?

------
swang
Complains about advertisements... shows an advertisement half way down the
page...

------
iammew
Relevant to the discussion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fgkK1J3Cs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fgkK1J3Cs)

~~~
iammew
Why is people down-voting this?!

~~~
takno
If you shared why it was relevant to the discussion and what it was people
would likely be more positive

~~~
gus_massa
[Spanish speaker here.]

This is a video of "La Cosquillita" by Juan Luis Guerra. I didn't know this
song, so I listened to all of it. I'm completely clueless about why this may
be related to the discussion.

Bad autotranslation of the lyric:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.musica.com%2Fletras.asp%3Fletra%3D59417)
(It's difficult to translate because it uses a local variations of the
spelling/pronunciation of the words. tl;dl: Someone fell in love and is
"ticklish".)

~~~
iammew
renaissance

------
djschnei
'It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if
that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning,
it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended
by that." Well, so fucking what?' —Stephen Fry

------
erjjones
Wow. Another self imposing post making its way to #hn (sigh)...

On to other news ...

How about #Microsoft releasing and open sourcing .NET Core
[http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/conceptual-
overview/dotnetcore...](http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/conceptual-
overview/dotnetcore.html) and
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2014/11/12/net-
core-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2014/11/12/net-core-is-open-
source/)

(?) Where has our community gone :/

