Perhaps sensing a shift in the zeitgeist, The New York Times has run no less than three stories over the past week about unplugging from the Internet.
In the most widely read, Pico Iyer's "The Joy of Quiet," the author posits the idea that solitude is the new luxury. Getting away from your PC, your phone and your iPad, Iyer argues, will allow you to get absorbed in a book, a conversation or a piece of music and bring you joy. In another essay, "A Time to Tune Out," Roger Cohen cites the destructive effects of being addicted to one's BlackBerry.
Finally, Nick Bilton, writing in The Times's Bits blog, resolves to spend 30 minutes a day without his iPhone or any other electronics this year.
Perhaps, as 2012 dawns, you too are feeling the need to curb your Internet usage. You may find that it's a bit harder than you first thought. Try an "Internet Sabbath," for instance, and you may feel that it's all but impossible to get through a Saturday without checking your email or Twitter or your Words With Friends games.
For those of you who fall into this category, there are some software programs that may help you achieve your goal this year. After all, what's better to fight a software addiction than software itself? Below are a few programs out there that will keep you from breaking your digital resolution.
The grandaddy of the Internet restriction programs, Freedom has garnered celeb fans like Dave Eggers, Nick Hornby, Seth Godin and Nora Ephron with a simple promise: Set the $10 program and you'll be barred from surfing the net for up to eight hours at a time.
Fred Stutzman, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, developed the software in 2008 after a local coffee bar got Wi-Fi. Before that, Stutzman and others had liked the fact that they could go to the cafe and get work done. Afterwards, "It really changed my experience," he says. "There was a totally different clientele."
More than 300,000 people have downloaded Freedom since that time. However, since then, the mobile web has become much bigger, leading to the question of whether there will ever be a Freedom app for your iPhone. Stutzman says that won't happen any time soon. "I wish there was something for that," Stutzman says, noting that neither iOS nor Android lets you override their web-browsing functions.
Image courtesy of Flickr, functoruser
Another alternative to going cold turkey is to shame yourself into using your computer time more efficiently. This can be achieved with programs like RescueTime, Klok, Slife and ManicTime. RescueTime, the best known of the bunch, gives you a readout at the end of the day (and year if you opt for the $6 a month Pro version) of your web activities.
Jason Grimes, VP of product marketing, says most people are astonished to learn that their eight-hour day translates to just four or five hours of productive time. Of course "productive time" is a slippery definition for most people. What if your job requires you to go on Facebook, for instance? Grimes says he has a simple rule: Time on HootsSuite is productive while time on Facebook or Twitter is goofing off.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Nat. Media Museum
The grandaddy of the Internet restriction programs, Freedom has garnered celeb fans like Dave Eggers, Nick Hornby, Seth Godin and Nora Ephron with a simple promise: Set the $10 program and you'll be barred from surfing the net for up to eight hours at a time.
Fred Stutzman, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, developed the software in 2008 after a local coffee bar got Wi-Fi. Before that, Stutzman and others had liked the fact that they could go to the cafe and get work done. Afterwards, "It really changed my experience," he says. "There was a totally different clientele."
More than 300,000 people have downloaded Freedom since that time. However, since then, the mobile web has become much bigger, leading to the question of whether there will ever be a Freedom app for your iPhone. Stutzman says that won't happen any time soon. "I wish there was something for that," Stutzman says, noting that neither iOS nor Android lets you override their web-browsing functions.
Image courtesy of Flickr, functoruser
Another alternative to going cold turkey is to shame yourself into using your computer time more efficiently. This can be achieved with programs like RescueTime, Klok, Slife and ManicTime. RescueTime, the best known of the bunch, gives you a readout at the end of the day (and year if you opt for the $6 a month Pro version) of your web activities.
Jason Grimes, VP of product marketing, says most people are astonished to learn that their eight-hour day translates to just four or five hours of productive time. Of course "productive time" is a slippery definition for most people. What if your job requires you to go on Facebook, for instance? Grimes says he has a simple rule: Time on HootsSuite is productive while time on Facebook or Twitter is goofing off.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Nat. Media Museum
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, diane39
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