Paul Miller a 27 year old Technology writer for The Verge has just come back online after a year without the internet. His motivation was what he describes as a “quarter life crisis” which he partially attributed to being constantly connected online and out of touch with the real world.
In summary, his experience lived up to expectations for the first month where he spent his time socializing, reading and writing a book. Then the novelty wore off. He stopped taking advantage of his new found liberation and replaced his internet distractions with other equally mundane distractions (e.g. playing video games).
Paul Miller learned the hard way that his issues were unrelated to technology. As he put it “<not using the internet for year> let me know my problems are more internal than external”. This is the same issue face by many businesses.
During the year Paul Miller has been offline I’ve had several conversations with senior executives who’s core strategy for organizational transformation is implementing new technology. They acknowledge they have broader organizational issues, but feel that technology will act as a forcing factor for broader change. Maybe spending 16 minutes viewing Paul Millers video will save them a from a year of heartache and significantly more expense.
