The last time I was completely offline for several weeks was in Cuba in 2012. An hour of internet was $25, most of which I would have spent in front of a loading bar in a hotel lobby or a musty internet cafe. I didn’t send a single e-mail, read any messages, or post a photo the entire vacation. It felt immensely free to be offline.
I’m never completely offline
When I talk about being offline on vacation these days, I mostly refer to the fact that I don’t read work emails and I’m not on social media (which is rarely true). I always have my cell phone with me. I carry the world in my pocket and I have to stop myself from constantly checking what’s going on. And even if I control myself, I’m still being tracked by all sorts of apps all the time. So I’m never completely offline.
That makes me think: will it even be possible to be completely offline in the future? We can switch off the devices that we wear on our bodies. But what about the devices around us: the surveillance cameras in public spaces, facial recognition at airports? I’m already starting to bite my nails nervously at the thought of a future where I’ll be online 24/7. How to calm down in such a future?
Oliver Ajkovic )
As a co-founder of the feminist organization Superrr Lab, Julia Kloiber works on just and inclusive digital futures. She regularly publishes her column in the print edition of MIT Technology Review.
Recreation is so important in order to regenerate, to maintain social contacts, to stay mentally mobile or simply not to die of a heart attack at the age of forty. 150 years ago, a right to vacation and rest was unimaginable until unions fought for it. Today it can be read in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, and in particular to reasonable limitation of hours of work and periodic vacation with pay.” With the Internet, however, holidays have changed. I take it at regular intervals, but I’m always online and connected thanks to the digital infrastructure around me – and that’s why I’m always a bit stressed.
Is this how people imagined the concept of vacation a hundred years ago? When tech companies and advertisers always know where you are? When you’re just a “ping” away from reacting to something every second? I ask myself, what would we have to do today in order to have room for recreation in the future?
The right to be offline
How about a right to be offline? Disconnected like back then in Cuba. Digitally undetectable and unavailable for a period of time. I imagine such a right to be similar to the right to vacation. It would need to be implemented in a way that is easy to unhook. Like a virtual switch that you flip and disconnect from everything.
In theory, we already have these switches today. We can disable tracking and leave our work cell phone at home. Then we just have to learn to let the next possible click be with our private device. But it’s not just the technical possibilities that keep us from doing so. Availability on vacation and outside of working hours has become a social norm. It is the social pressure that ensures that, despite being on vacation, we react to messages, check work emails, give work orders to others from a distance – or even reply to friends and relatives. And the pressure is passed on. When I react to things on my vacation, I unconsciously expect others to do the same.
The social pressure has to go. Fertilizer for our overwrought brains is not more but less input. The hardest and easiest at the same time: We have to start with ourselves. – Traveled after dictation.
What Julia Kloiber advocates, namely taking care of yourself, is also the subject of the new issue of MIT Technology Review. Can now be ordered in stores and in the heise shop.
(jle)
