24 Hours Without the Internet?

For the record, I have not seen the film Leave the World Behind, and I don’t intend to. I have enough to worry about without having to endure artificial hysteria from Hollywood. Although the film’s premise is something I have long worried about, I’m thinking that watching a two hour movie about the sudden destruction of the internet which leaves most of the western world helpless would do absolutely nothing to help me sleep better at night. So, I’ll pass on Barack and Michelle Obama’s latest vanity project.

But, I will freely admit that modern technology worries me. Yes, I have benefitted greatly from the digital revolution and so have you, but every time my Apple Watch tells me that my screen time increased 22% last week, I worry. I have become totally dependent on a functioning internet. If somebody bombed the United States Postal Service out of existence tomorrow, I would hardly bat an eye. But if my email box went dark I would be lost. How would I even get paid? Right now when I see money in my brokerage account I click a key on my laptop and the money appears in my checking account within 24 hours. How would I actually buy anything? Research anything? Communicate with my kids? Find Dad Jokes? Thanks to me uncanny sense of direction I could at least remember how to drive to Maine, but since my car is essentially a computer on wheels, it probably wouldn't even start. But, enough doom and gloom.

It has started me to thinking—something I’m not always comfortable with. Instead of contemplating the collapse of the internet and the chaos it would bring, I have been asking myself a more mundane question. Could I go one day, 24 hours, without it? Could I intentionally leave my cellphone on my nightstand, park my Apple Watch in the charging stand and close my laptop and iPad for 24 hours? I mean, after I finish writing this blog. Actually, I don’t think I could, not because I couldn’t muster the necessary discipline but because I couldn’t function at work…

Kristin: I need the password to Riskalyze.

Me: I don’t have it.

Kristin: Look on your phone. They just texted it to you.

Me: Maybe so, but I’m not using technology today.

Kristin: You’re an idiot.

Who am I kidding? Even if I could manage to get through a day at the office without the internet, could I really go all day long without checking the markets, checking my social media feeds or checking how many page-views this post got? Of course I could. Couldn’t I? I wonder. If I were to carve out an exception for business-specific requirements like the aforementioned Riskalyze password in order to avoid Kristin’s epic eye-roll, could I lay the rest of it down for 24 hours?

Meet me here tomorrow morning and let’s all find out!