“Not too long ago I was on it all day long,” writes Juan Rodriguez in an essay in the Montreal Gazette, “it” being the Internet. “I felt buzzed and strangely empty.” But when Rodriguez, a freelance writer, moved into a new apartment last year, he didn’t bring the Net with him:<\/p>\n
\nUnhooking myself from the Net started as an experiment, after depending on it for work and recreation for nearly 20 years. If humans are basically creatures of habit, I wanted to know whether I could survive without being addicted to the World Wide Web. According to some friends and colleagues, this draconian act has transformed me into something akin to an antisocial psychopath. And stupid, too, as I am in the newspaper business, which places a premium on being up-to-date.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Rodriguez hasn’t gone entirely off-line. He spends an hour or two a day at an Internet cafe, catching up on email and doing research. But he’s finding that being disconnected most of the time is opening doors that the Net had closed:<\/p>\n
\nOnce I eliminated the Internet from my apartment, I rediscovered the joys of reading books (not blogs). It’s a feeling I haven’t experienced this intensely since my adolescence, when I devoured books, like a human sponge with a lust for everything … Not having the Internet at home has done wonders for my self-image – and also played havoc with it. I imagine myself as a teenage rebel again, a non-conformist, Bucking the System … And, somehow, the less I sense my life being “tracked” online, the more secure and independent – free? – I feel, at least for a little while.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n