Saturday, January 02, 2010

WSJ: Daring to Live Your Life Offline



I once had a high school history teacher, Mr. Bower, who told us on several occasions that the automatic door opener just might be the reason Americans don't connect with one another in same way. In the old days, he said, you'd come home from running errands or from work, and you would park your car in the driveway, get out, and open the garage door manually. Inevitably, you'd see your neighbor, stop and say hello, and end up talking for a while. After the powered, remote-control door openers became popular, neighbors became more isolated. He was on to something. We have a one-car garage detached from our 1922 house. However, my wife and I have elected to use it for storage, and at least a couple of times a week, when I get out of my car, I have a short conversation with my neighbor, who's usually out smoking on his porch. I'd love to find Mr. Bower and see what he thinks of our day of instant communication and social networking...

From Here:

When reporting a story, I sometimes need to find a particular kind of person—someone who's battling cancer, or who recently switched banks, or who owns both a Chevy pickup and Toyota sedan.

At such moments, I call my brother Keith, a telecommunications worker in eastern Kansas. Usually he says, "I know just the guy."
[BONDS] Kagan McLeod

His contacts are so diverse in large part because he's offline. At age 52, he's never sent an email, surfed the Web or bought anything online. With no BlackBerry to distract him in the grocery line, he's likely to make a friend or two before checking out. With no Web page to instruct him on his latest project—how to grind sausage or build a cow fence or install a wood-burning stove—he seeks out the help and advice of neighbors who have done it, and during beer-drinking sessions afterward he listens carefully to their talk of health problems, banking habits and new-car purchases.

"I like talking to people," he says. "I don't understand this thing nowadays where people in the same room send each other emails instead of talking."


Hat Tip: Kendall Harmon

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