Beginning on January 1, 2027, I will be living in 1999.
I remember life before the internet. It’s not possible to return to that world, and I can’t really drag the timeline back to 1999, either. I can’t return to a version of the internet that was a library instead of a store that asks me to buy something every 15 seconds. But I can mitigate my relationship to it the way that I did back then: by logging off. By having time online be the exception rather than the rule to my every waking moment.
I have tried versions of this before: restricted hours without my phone. Limiting my time on individual apps. Locking up my phone, turning off my wifi. I always work my way back to 12 hours of screentime a day. Eight to ten of those hours, I am working one of my several jobs. But I know what those numbers mean. I am never offline. I give very few tasks my full attention. I have let the camera eat first, not only at the table but in nearly every one of my experiences. It is time for a more radical shift, and I refuse to believe that an app or a tool is the answer to my problems.
My problem is the internet. The solution is to quit.
But that’s really not possible. I read “You Don’t Need a Smartphone” by August Lamm about a month ago. Lamm is one of a growing number of people trying to opt out of our heavily surveilled digital existence, and finding the challenge difficult to impossible. Lamm does a great job and gives good advice: get a notebook, use a real camera, let yourself get lost. But even she admits that it’s impossible to do some things (banking, international travel, two-factor authentication, interacting with the US government) without a smartphone. She found that she could limit her use, but as a true digital native of a country captured by the Nerd Reich, there was no way out. The most compelling part of the book for me was her continued appeal to the “older generations” (just take me out back and shoot me, Pa) to recall how we used to live without it, and reach for that.
I do remember. I got the internet in my house when I was 12 years old. Not an adult, but pretty independent: I knew by then how to use the phone book. I read a print newspaper and kept my notes in a code I devised as a child and still use sometimes, by hand. I made friends IRL and rode the bus to the beach without carrying a charger, or anything else. I used a Thomas Guide and the world’s worst sense of direction to get around.
I will return, as much as I am able, to an analogish existence. I can’t quit cold turkey: I hold a half-dozen jobs that require email and Adobe, and my rent is collected in 2027 dollars. But I can nerf my iPhone. I can go to my local library for research. I can restrict my personal email to once a week. I can remove the ability to scroll, waste time, and serve the impulse to hunt while gathering nothing at all, from my devices and turn them into what they used to be: tools for work that I don’t use all fucking day long to produce very little.
The Rules
- Tools I use must have been available in 1999. This means no iPod, no Kindle, yes Polaroid and yes Bluetooth headphones.
- This rule does not extend to media. I will be watching the Mad Men boxed set, not fucking Friends.
- This rule is getting slightly bent because I don’t have a laptop from the Before Times. But I am shutting off the wifi on my MacBook, as well as iTunes and any other apps that don’t pass the 1999 test.
- Paper calendar, paper datebook, paper notebook, paper books, paper maps in the car.
- My car, blessedly, has a built-in GPS system that runs on radio waves rather than an internet connection. It is comparable to systems available in 1999, and I will be using that instead of letting Google Maps track me wherever I go. I will probably get lost. I’ll tell you all about it.
- I cannot use any streaming or online subscription-based service, nor can I ask someone to turn it on for me. But if someone puts it on, I can watch passively. No pausing, change requests, or requesting to look at the comments.
- No social media. I have been on socmed like it was my full time job since 2008. This one is going to be hard.
- There were blogs in 1999, but this one will go dormant. This is mostly a measure to curtail temptation and focus my writing energy elsewhere.
- No online shopping. Amazon was a weird book website in 1999; nothing more.
- If there is an in-person solution (go to the bank, go to the post office, go talk to a friend instead of texting) I must choose it.
- If I can handle it with a phone call, I must.
- I must remember how to do one thing at a time. This is the hardest for me: I am a supreme multitasker. If I am driving or doing any kind of manual labor, I am always listening to an audiobook. In 2027/1999, the only audiobooks are on CD. Those are not plentiful, as I have discovered in my quest to clean out the Goodwill of movies on DVD and CDs and records that I want to listen to. I will have to face my own attention span, and my own tolerance for focus, silence, and singular pursuits. Say a prayer for me.
I’m doing morning pages. I’m already a diarist, but I’ve fallen off a great deal in the last few years, averaging about one handwritten page per month. I also intend to do the Bradbury Challenge: reading a poem, an essay, and a short story every day, and writing a new short story every week. I have no children in my home and want to remind you I am currently putting up double digit screentime hours every day. Yes, I have the time. I will read a lot and write a lot besides.
I am also writing a snail-mail newsletter. These will be typewritten and photocopied with the help of friends and my local library. This is separate and different from my online newsletter, which will be dormant through 2027. This is separate and different from handwritten letters on my Patreon, for which I still have slots. If you would like to sign up for my typewritten snail-mail 2027 newsletter, please add yourself to the list. (If you’ve already reached out, I’ve got you.)
So, how’s this going to be? I expect to suffer. I expect to experience withdrawal, inconvenience, annoyance, disconnection, and despair. But I will probably also experience peace, wonder, and the particular joy of the internet being a fun sometimes thing to do rather than a constantly draining demand.
I plan to write about the experience. The newsletter will be postcards from the edge, but only the experience of the whole year can yield enough to tell me something about myself and my place in the world. That work will be longer, and I look forward to figuring it out.
People are welcome to drop-in with me for a week or a month or even just one day, the way that folks sometimes run one mile of a marathon to encourage a friend. If you’re doing a short unplugged run with me, reach out and let me know. We can keep each other honest, or just bitch about how hard it’s been. It’s going to be hard, but everything worth doing is.
I will see you on the other side. Probably.
