Back in the digital jungle

Written on 5th February 2009                                                                                                              18 COMMENTS
Jim Stolze,

As you may know I took part of an experiment last December. An experiment to see wether or not you can live without the internet in modern society. And of course, you can. We’re not talking about living without food or water, however it seems that more and more people feel that a wireless internet connection is as important as running water.

But to function at work and in my personal life without the use of Internet, was quite a challenge. In fact, it was a big challenge for the people around me too.

In this article I would like to share my experience with you. These are just simple observations that I wrote down in an old fashion diary. Keywords for this article would be: attention, addiction, inspiration and relief.

The first week
This was the most exciting period. I got a lot of calls and warm (hand written) letters from people who heard about the experiment. To go “cold turkey” by cutting my digital lifeline over night was a funny feeling. Have you ever heard of phantom limb pain? There was something missing and all I could think about was just that.

Everytime I was writing a story or article my left hand seemed to have a mind on it’s own and tried to push ALT TAB after every paragraph. That was my common behaviour when I was online, to see if there were any new emails. In many occasions I would wander off and open my RSS-reader or check out the most recent comments on blogs that I was following. But being offline made those actions completely irrelevant, so I had to go through with writing. Then I found myself walking to get a cup of coffee instead. It seemed that I was constantly looking for excuses to interrupt my work. Only later this month I could concentrate better and finish the document before I sought the interruption. (more…)

attention, diary, distraction, internetics, presentations

18 Comments »

No time for a diary? Swurl comes to the rescue

Written on 7th July 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Just when I thought the lifecasting/ aggregating/ microblogging market was saturated, a new useful player pops up. The emphasis is on useful, as new services in this field emerge all the time – yet most of them look like useless clones to me. But Swurl absolutely isn’t one of them. Ryan and Jonathan from San Diego have developed a lifecasting tool that aggregates your online activity in a blog-like diary.

Although there’s a comment function, Swurl isn’t so much about sharing stuff with friends. Just like Second Brain, it wants to help you out with organizing and remembering the things you did online. So instead of desperately trying to evaluate the day in a diary, you just give Swurl your blog, Twitter, Amazon Wish list, StumbleUpon, Friendfeed, Flickr and more services’ credentials – the machine will do the rest. Although you probably don’t publish your deepest feelings online, Swurl can be satisfying alternative. Here’s a screen shot of my “diary”:

This may sound odd, coming from somebody who just posted a screen shot of his diary, but I’d like to see a “private” option on Swurl. I share my updates on Friendfeed et al and I’m planning to use Swurl only as a private diary. I could even start a private blog that DOES contain my deepest thoughts and pump them into Swurl. That would complete the diary experience for me.

diary, friendfeed, lifecasting, personalize, swurl

2 Comments »