John McMahon
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

Yes you are correct, and I especially appreciate the picture of the train car full of newspaper readers.

Let’s not forget headphones and “walkman” devices have been around 30 years and we have been tuning out reading books and magazines and newspapers with headphones on ever since.

However, I want to point out a few caveats. One is that it is increasingly rare to be unplugged… an experience that Millenials and Generation Next are going to probably lose altogether in the near future.

Not to be overly dramatic, but there is an incredible value in simply “being” as a human animal this is our default state and to lose touch with it is somewhat changing what it means to be alive.

Case in point, in my 20s my friends and I used to take epic backpacking trips through the Sierra Nevada. We didn’t have cell phones, we brought books and headlamps.

After a few days of being totally detached from Television and computers, my eyes would somehow open up to a new level of vision, hearing and movement were heightened, and truly becoming “one with nature” was a sort of psychic battery recharge that we would bring back to the city with us and that lasted for weeks. Spiritual and physical, mind and body reconnecting with what it means to be simple, primal, and animal in nature.

Just this past summer, I was car camping on a tiny 3 day trip within the borders of the SFBay ARea. My phone was packed away and I managed to not turn it on for a full 2 days.

What struck me was that I did not miss it whatsoever, probably having too much fun with my boys. But the really impactful experience was the wave of stress and actual *dread* when I was driving back to SF and turned on the phone again to check email and social networks. I was hit with a wave of anxiety, worrying about the news I would read, the inboxes and inevitable todos and catching up that awaited.

So, I’m not saying tech is good or bad, it just is of course. Like fire or the printing press it can be used for good as well as evil, or just mundane and neutral more often than not.

But what I find concerning, and what I think deserves some thought, is that in fact the younger generations are being raised with no concept of downtime, no concept of offline, and certainly without the experience or appreciation of what it means to unplug and be a human animal, alone in the world, if even for a day.

That will certainly make environmentalism a tougher sell when the value of solitude and connecting with the earth becomes a rarity.

John McMahon

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Entrepreneur, Developer, Dad