I find myself the unwilling participant in an experiment of technology deprival.

Calling the phone company a few weeks ago, I asked them to take down my “landline” while keeping the DSL internet service I’d already been using for the past several years.

Customer service told me my DSL would come down “no longer than 24 hours” for the transaction to complete--to which I exclaimed, “24 hours! WHY?”

One of us was acting silly. And I concede, it might have been me.

Fortunately, I could pre-plan--or so I thought.

Best laid plans

The phone company caught me flat-footed, taking down service a day ahead of schedule. I work primarily at home--and had deadlines pending. At first, I thought this might work to my advantage if service returned before the weekend.         

30 hours into the outage, the customer humoring rep...er... customer service rep patiently explained that, yes, the guy who flipped the “off” switch was indeed running ahead of schedule, but the guy who flips the “on” switch was not.

The stopped-up drain

So it takes 48 hours to reset service I already have. Let us reflect on whether large companies would ever have gotten large if they provided this sort of service when they were small.

The quasi-classic Star Trek line uttered by engineer “Mister Scott” came to my mind: “The more they complicate the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

I composed my content; edited it; polished it. Before long, four articles sat on my desk top, each now stuck at the same clog.

Two steps forward, two steps back

Amazing how dependent we’ve become on technologies nonexistent (for practical purposes if not in actuality) 20 years ago. We certainly had as many newspapers and magazines in the early 90s as we do now (perhaps more), and writers hit their deadlines every day. And yet, if I tried to mail paper copies of my content in today’s world, I’d lose my clients upon delivery and be branded a hopeless eclectic.

Addicted to surfing

Okay, I’m only telling half the story.

The truth is--I missed my pop music news groups. I missed the YouTube videos, and Smaller Indiana, and similar “networking” sites that kept my finger on the pulse of the creative industry.

And by “missed” I mean--the way Dean Martin “missed” his morning cocktail. The way Gollum “missed” the One Ring.

Way too often, I’d click the browser icon with a desperate craving. Intellectually, I didn’t NEED that sort of stuff every day.

But--I sure did “miss” it.

The positive side of the pain

I knew working without the ‘net would yield a positive difference in my output, but I was shocked at the evidence of my productivity the last two days. Frankly, six articles--polished and drafted--in two days is a phenomenal output for me. That doesn’t change the fact I couldn’t deliver the finished articles without going online--but still, if I could produce over 6,000 words every 48 hours, I could write a novel in roughly a month.

The last 48 hours were perhaps the first time in a number of years I’d worked without distraction.

For me, this brought into sharp focus that those of us who earn our living by computer may operate in a state of perpetual distraction.

I’m considering a once-a-week habit of willingly dropping off line for a day--a day of my own choosing, of course. Perhaps I’ll share the results in a couple months.

Who is with me? Who’s willing to go “cold turkey” one day a week, just to see what happens?

“CopyBob” Sullivan

Originally published as an editorial in the August 2008 Morgan County Business Leader

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