23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki is right. And so are the other promoters and participants backing the third National Day of Unplugging, which begins at sundown Friday.
We’re overdoing it with our go-to gizmos, the unpluggers argue. We’ve become distracted, unavailable, oblivious, twitchy, obsessive, needy and, in some ways, insufferable. We need, they say, to give it a rest.
And they’re right. But I can’t do it. I can’t unplug for 24 hours. And no, not just because the NCAA’s Sweet 16 will play out this weekend — prime time for tweeting, score-checking and the occasional Facebook smack-talk. OK, maybe that’s part of it. But I just don’t feel the need. I mean, I’ve got this. I can handle it. Denial? Maybe.
I’ve written about this before, about others who have urged unplugging in one way or another. There’s lecturer and author Lawrence Lessig, who once a year moves off the grid for a month. And globe-trotting CEO Yaacov Cohen, who weekly observes the Jewish sabbath, including abstaining from technology. And the guys at Stanford, whose study indicates that middle-school girls develop better social relationships when they actually talk to, and don’t just text, the people in their lives. And there is Sherry Turkle, the MIT professor who literally wrote the book on digital dependency.
I know they’re right. And you know they’re right. But I’m just not ready to pull the plug.
That said, I find inspiration in Wojcicki taking the pledge.Read the full article here