{"id":179,"date":"2009-07-22T08:03:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T08:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=179"},"modified":"2009-07-22T08:03:49","modified_gmt":"2009-07-22T08:03:49","slug":"unplug_me_dont_email_me_may_i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/07\/unplug_me_dont_email_me_may_i\/","title":{"rendered":"Unplug Me, Don&#8217;t Email Me, May I Borrow Your Pen"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"techtunnel.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/techtunnel.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px; float: right;\" height=\"225\" width=\"300\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>As I wandered around New York last weekend, I noticed a decrease in white earbuds and a sharp rise in clutched smart phones among my fellow travelers. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2009\/07\/19\/technology\/20090719-driving-game.html\">At least they weren&#8217;t driving<\/a>, but walking in NYC is increasingly precarious.) Still, having shut the lid on my laptop for the day in order to take in the lovely afternoon sun and street sights, I began to wonder why I didn&#8217;t make the technological separation permanent. How much of the world was I missing while fixated on that ever-blinking cursor? That was it! I was going to unplug and write a book about it&#8211;on paper! Those hours spent in daily email and IM conversation would be newly available to me. Maybe I could even get Brian on it for the &#8220;He&#8217;s plugged in\/She&#8217;s dropped out&#8221; angle. We could get a book deal!<\/p>\n<p>One block and a few cleansing breaths later, I regained my grasp on reality. What was so romantic about life without Google? Would I want to research a book with only the materials of my local library at hand? Did I really want to lose my connections to all the amazing people I communicate with regularly, but only virtually? Would I actually see more in the real world without my technology, or is technology the tool that actually allows me to connect more deeply with the world around me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I wandered around New York last weekend, I noticed a decrease in white earbuds and a sharp rise in clutched smart phones among my fellow travelers. (At least they weren&#8217;t driving, but walking in NYC is increasingly precarious.) Still, having shut the lid on my laptop for the day in order to take in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}