But honestly, we got lucky, and it could have easily gone the other way. So, we drove to the airport "blind." In the end, it took about 30 minutes, which isn't too bad for West LA. I couldn't even Google to see if such a thing exists. Is there a service you can call? I have no idea. But what if you had no internet at all? My dad (to this day) admonishes me to keep a paper atlas in my car "in case your phone breaks," but even if I had such a thing (sorry Dad), it wouldn't give me traffic-aware driving directions. Thanks to Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell, I know that around 2005, MapQuest beat Yahoo Maps, but Google Maps was the best. Google Maps has become such an integral part of my life that I literally couldn't think of another way to get driving directions.Īnd herein was the problem: I couldn't think of a non-internet-powered alternative to Google Maps. Nope, I replied, I think that violates the spirit of the experiment. "Should I open Maps on my phone?" she asked. She wisely pointed out that this was LA, where choosing the wrong route can turn a 20-minute errand into a 2-hour crawl. After we got on the road, she noticed I wasn't using Google Maps. Midday, my calendar reminded me about something that we'll attribute to a case of poor timing: I had to take my girlfriend to the airport. And without the next episode of "The OA" to watch, I spent 40 minutes obsessing over every agonizing spin of the elliptical. Unfortunately, music no longer distracts me when I exercise - that's why I tend to watch video. It's a bit of a throwback to an earlier time, but this week it was a lifesaver. Yes, I have Spotify, but I also I keep my entire CD-based music collection on my phone - about 80GB worth. I fell back on plan B: music on my iPhone. But it's irrelevant, since I hadn't thought to do it. Would that have been allowed? I'm not sure. And of course, I hadn't planned ahead to download anything from Netflix the day before. That meant no Netflix or Hulu, which is usually how I manage to power through the mindless tedium of pedaling for 40 minutes. I climbed on board, positioned my iPad, and then remembered - no internet. It was there to remind me not to slide into in my normal routine, since seemingly everything I do marinates in the internet.įirst task on deck: exercise on my elliptical. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I had already taped a yellow sticky to my phone: "No internet." No news, social media, or web browsing.īasically, if it happens on or via the internet, it was a "no." And off we went. Phone calls were obviously OK, but FaceTime was off-limits. No email, with one exception: I could send and receive business emails related to other assignments. Like an addict bargaining with a counselor, we laid down ground rules. But because I am a journalist and can't completely unplug, I had to talk out with my editor what was an acceptable use of the internet. The experiment ran from Wednesday through Sunday so that I'd be able to assess both workdays and a weekend. And now that the internet has changed me, I wanted to know if that was for the better. But I eagerly embraced the internet, simultaneously telling people, "this will fundamentally transform everything we know," and not really understanding what that might eventually mean. In fact, I can still remember the first time I installed the Mozilla browser on a PC and explored the nascent World Wide Web.
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