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• Katie Couric Tells the Nation to Unplug

  March 18th, 2010 by admin

  On Thursday, March 18, on the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric titled her Notebook “Unplug,” and borrowed from William Wordsworth’s famous line, the World Wide Web is too much with us.

  “One nonprofit group called Reboot wants to do something about it. They’re declaring a National Day of Unplugging, beginning tomorrow at sunset. The idea started as a remembrance of the Jewish sabbath…but as USA Today pointed out…the principles are pretty universal.”

  “Put down that blackberry, connect with loved ones, take a walk outside. An AOL study found that 59 percent of PDA users check their inboxes every time a message arrives. You’ve got mail? More like you’ve got an addiction.”

  A video Yelp “asks people to cut the umbilical chord of data.”

  …

  That’s a page from my notebook.

  I’m Katie Couric, CBS News.

  Take a look at the entire piece here:

  
  

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• Interact Live: Old School

  March 18th, 2010 by admin

  We are up on the Huffington Post:

  If you walk around with ear-buds shielding you from the world; if you panic when you can’t get reception on your iPhone; if you tweet or post status updates about what you are eating, you need to join the National Day of Unplugging.

  Those committed to the March 20 event sponsored by the Jewish think-tank Reboot, include Ken Goldberg, Director of the UC Berkeley Center for New Media.

  “Technology is quite seductive but patience is still a virtue,” said Goldberg who is a member of the Reboot network. “Patience has never been my strong point, but I’m learning that periods of inaccessibility put the world into context: the alternative is a ‘beige’ existence where everything is equivalent. As the Rabbis warned in the tale of the Golem, technologies are extremely helpful as long as we remember how to unplug them.”

  Goldberg and his wife, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, wrote a poem titled “Yelp” (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg), for the launch of the Sabbath Manifesto and the National Day of Unplugging, that they have turned into a video.

  Read the whole post here.

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• Take the Wall Street Challenge: Unplug

  March 18th, 2010 by admin

  Edmundo Braverman wonders on WallStreetOasis.com whether you can unplug:

  “When I first entered the work force, computers were something you used to play video games and hire prostitutes (yes, in the early days of dial-up and Compuserve, hookers were web pioneers). Cell phones came later, and you had to carry a battery pack in a satchel that made you look like an extra from Saving Private Ryan. They put out about 10 megawatts of power, and you kept conversations short both because it cost about $5 a minute and you could actually feel a brain tumor forming after 15 seconds.”

  “Fast forward 20 years, and technology is everywhere. We rely on it for everything. It has extended our work days from 8 hours to 24. We are always available now. Is it even possible to go 24 hours without plugging in? And if it isn’t, doesn’t that make you a little sad? I’m tempted to try it, but I doubt I’d be able to pull it off. And I’m basically retired. Could any of you go 24 hours off the grid?”

  Read his entire post here.

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• NY Times: On the Sabbath, the iPhones Shall Rest

  March 18th, 2010 by admin

  New York Times Writer Austin Considine writes that “if Moses were redelivering his theophany today — the assembled crowd furiously tweeting his every sound bite — one imagines the frustrated prophet’s taking a moment to clarify what God meant, exactly, by a ‘day of rest.'”

  Reboot is trying to address that modern day problem by asking people to stash away their phones and embrace the Sabbath Manifesto’s 10 principles, he said.

  Jill Soloway, a producer for Showtime’s “United States of Tara,” and a writer and producer for HBO’s “Six Feet Under” told Considine that unplugging for a day was “next to excruciating,” particularly since she got an iPhone about a year ago.

  “Somebody once said to me that a computer fits with anxiety like a lock in a key,” she said. “And that’s exactly right. You have an anxious moment out in your life, or in your world, and you want a little hit, and your e-mail can do that.”

  But, she’ll power down for the National Day of Unplugging, she said. There is something about preserving “the dignity of one day” each week that was compelling on an emotional level, Soloway said.

  Read the entire article here.

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• USA Today: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Unplug

  March 17th, 2010 by admin

  In writing about the Sabbath Manifesto’s National Day of Unplugging in USA Today’s “Faith and Reason” column, writer Leslie Miller asks “Do you keep a weekly “Sabbath” day? How do you honor the spirit of a day of rest?”

  She notes that Reboot’s project is “designed to get overworked and overstressed young techies to rediscover the novel Biblical concept of a day of rest.”

  And Miller adds, “As the saying goes: ‘You don’t have to be Jewish’ to appreciate the concept.”

  Read the entire column here.

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• San Francisco Chronicle Yelps about Unplugging

  March 17th, 2010 by admin

  San Francisco Chronicle Columnist Leah Garchik touted the National Day of Unplugging and the poem “Yelp” written by Rebooters Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg for the Sabbath’s Manifesto launch.

  “The National Day of Unplugging begins at sunset Friday and continues through sunset Saturday. In support of ‘revisiting the present tense,’ Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, high-tech royalty (she created the Webbys; he’s a robotics prof at UC Berkeley), have created ‘Yelp’ a two-minute takeoff of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl.'”

  Read it  here.

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• Jewish Week: Listen for New Sound

  March 17th, 2010 by admin

  The Jewish Week tells people to “Listen carefully this weekend and you may hear the ring-tone sound of BlackBerries, cell phones and other devices being turned off.”

  “It’s part of the launch of a National Day of Unplugging that takes place this Shabbat, the project of a group of hip young Jewish artists and creative types who want to revive the concept of the Sabbath as a day of rest.”

  Read the entire article here.

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• Don’t Implode: Give Yourself a New Life

  March 17th, 2010 by admin

  Chaviva, the Kvetching Editor  says to give the National Day of Unplugging “a gander, and make it happen. We all need a break; we’re on overload; we’re liable to implode. Give yourself new life, and wrap yourself around the Sabbath Manifesto.”

  “And, you know what, a sabbath — while it has a loaded “religious” tone — really is for everyone. I think now about people who function on a 24/7 schedule of Twitter and blogging and Facebook and their phone and text messaging and fidgeting with worthless apps and my face hurts. In a world burdened with noise, I think everyone could take a day to step back and just say “wow, there’s more to life than all of this other stuff.” I hear from people all the time how mystified they are at the idea of a day without technology, and then later from the same people how they sincerely wish they had the will power to do so.”

  Read her whole post here.
   

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• Sabbath Manifesto Goes Viral

  March 16th, 2010 by admin

  News of the Sabbath Manifesto and its National Day of Unplugging is heating up the Internet. Check us out on these blogs:

  Jewsish Press International: http://www.jewpi.com/join-sabbath-manifesto-in-a-national-day-of-unplugging/

  JBlog Central: http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=2662983

  eJewish Philanthropy: http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/join-sabbath-manifesto-in-a-national-day-of-unplugging/

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• Sixth and I Synagogue Takes on the 10 Principles

  March 16th, 2010 by admin

  The Sixth and I Historic Synagogue held a successful Sabbath Manifesto event last Friday with 200 people! They helped empower people to take their lives back and embrace the principles. Read about it here.

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