Recently, a friend sent me a link to The Amish Project, in which a junior copywriter for Leo Burnett in Chicago went offline for 90 days in order to finish his portfolio. By the time he came back online, he had learnt to communicate more effectively, be more productive with his time and he even won his girlfriend back.
Similarly, Jennifer Rauch went offline for roughly six months in 2010. She decided that she would ‘live’ in the year 1990 – meaning her life was now full of videotapes, zines, letters, newspapers, paper bills, landline telephones and so on. She recently had an interesting article published in Transformations journal, which discussed the origins of Slow Media.
When I hear about projects that are similar to mine, I initially experience a pang of terror. “Oh, christ! Someone beat me to it!” But when I think more about it, I think it’s great that other people feel the need to embark on such an endeavour. It means that what I’ve done – and the film that I’m making – might actually prove to be interesting to other people!
Looking at what Jake learnt from The Amish Project, I did notice a couple of differences in my own offline experience. First off, I think I was and am much more addicted to online media. When I started the project, I was terrified and when I finished it, I was incredibly relieved and couldn’t wait to get back online. Sure, my behaviour has changed since I’ve been back, but I immediately decided never to do anything like this again!
One of the reasons why I think I found it so hard was that my work – researching online media – kind of needs to be done with an internet connection… Funny that.
What about you? Do you think you’d ever give up modern technology for a while? What do you think would be the hardest part/thing you’d miss most?
