It's a long angst-dripping screed lamenting the extreme data connectivity of today, failing to note three critical points: (A) the connectivity is as vital to "life as we know it" as your nervous system is to your body, (B) he lives it by choice, and (C) he can unplug if he wants to.
He fails to notice that "we" is not universal. For high-tech types living in crowded cities, yes, but there are a whole lotta people much less, and even un-, connected to the Web.
He fails to notice that the connectivity he laments is critical to maintaining life as he knows it. What he takes for granted, the symbiotic consequence of extreme data proliferation. Take away the interconnectedness that scares him, and he has few options beyond tilling the ground and harvesting his own food.
He fails to notice the choices he has. Going only so far as locking the door & smashing the phone, he laments the data-driven world still exists just feet away. Newsflash: there is life outside the blue/red[1] border.
He fails to notice that disconnection is an option, to whatever degree he is comfortable with. Log out of Facebook. Avoid HN. Stop viewing social media. Most news is irrelevant. Pay in cash. Accept that disconnection means longer waits and fewer options. Realize that most of humanity throughout history, some 40 billion people, got along to what they considered "fine" without the Web.
Quit whining. If you want to get out, you can. There is an off switch, and the disconnected life is wonderful.
[1] - if you look closely at voter precinct maps and their blue/red Democrat/Republican Left/Right Progressive/Conservative boundaries, you'll see stark & consistent delineation right at the urban/rural boundary. Cities are political archipelagos, and he's lamenting the foliage & ground, longing for the oceans he doesn't realize surround him.
"He fails to notice that "we" is not universal. For high-tech types living in crowded cities, yes, but there are a whole lotta people much less, and even un-, connected to the Web."
I live in Michigan and work in Ann Arbor. The stretch of road I drive on to get to work is poorly designed and clogs up easily, and what alternate routes there are aren't very good and also tend to rapidly clog up if the main route clogs. I started using Google Now for its ability to alert me in advance of traffic jams, and yesterday it did one of those textbook cases where it got me off the highway at precisely the correct exit and back on at precisely the correct exit to avoid the accident-based congestion. Saved me 15-30 minutes easily. It isn't always that textbook, but it often saves me substantial amounts of time.
What was interesting about it, and what prompted me to reply to you, is that there are literally thousands of cars stuck on the highway, and yet, within plus or minus thirty seconds of me, there was a sum total of about three other cars that drove in such a way as to suggest they also had Google talking in their ears. At one point there was five of us appearing to dodge around pretty well, but two of them got back on at an entrance that would be tempting to a human but was still a bad choice (the alternative requires driving through a village for about a mile at 25 mph and two out-of-sync traffic lights, which on this day was still a win over the highway, but usually a bad idea even when the highway is "normally" clogged).
To a first approximation, "everybody" is on Facebook, but beyond that, honestly, the penetration of "wiredness" is much more shallow than those of us here can easily assume.
Observation: the up/down vote fluctuation on this post makes me wish HN would implement a Tufte-style "sparkline" next to the points. Sometimes a post gets an exciting amount of vote activity, but ends with a mundane neutral points total.
Well, in fairness Tumbleweed Homes are premium. I'm just giving a starting link as a hint. If you're looking for serious cheap & portable along those lines, I got a used pop-up camper for $2000 (new $10,000) that I'd be OK living in (and do for a few weeks a year, family of 4 + 2 dogs). During a sale, I also got the detailed plans for a Tumbleweed Home for $20, simple enough one could scrounge most of the materials. You can spend as little as you like, so long as you're willing to DIY and have flexible standards.
Speaking of which... Go to the Zillow link and search (largest range allowed is a whole state) for properties at/under $1000. Dig thru the auctions/scams/typos, and you'll find viable - even nice - lots dirt cheap.
Put those together, deal with misc paperwork & other costs, be ready to work, and you can have a home free-and-clear for under $5000. (Yes, it's not a 2400 sq ft ranch in the suburbs; deal with it.)
I've found the tiny-house movement fascinating to watch from the outside. It's got a real appeal to me that's only increased as I've gradually transitioned from my youthful can't-wait-to-be-uploaded outlook to a much more reluctant relationship with tech and the always-on life.
My concerns about trying it myself:
1) The country-living variety defeats any small-ecological-footprint appeal, unless you live like depression-era or earlier farmers (i.e. don't underestimate the ecological sensibility of a studio apartment in the city)
2) The urban/suburban variety is much harder to make work if you don't want to live illegally in someone's backyard, thanks to zoning, HOAs, et c., plus the cost of land very nearly ruins the money-saving angle.
3) Health care is really, really expensive. I doubt I could make enough money to cover that for my family, on top of other unavoidable expenses, while living a disconnected life in the sticks, as much as it might appeal to me otherwise, even with the savings from not having rent or a mortgage. That goes beyond "roughing it" to "irresponsible".
4) I've got a tickle in the back of my mind that a large part of this is a marketing ploy to sell mobile homes at a premium by appealing to "economy" and "eco-consciousness" when both of those would be better (or at least similarly-well) served by buying single-wide in an ordinary mobile home park, which for some reason[1] rarely comes up as an alternative. Incidentally, if you've ever been to poor rural areas along sleepy back-woods highways, you've undoubtably noticed that you can do the trailer thing and the dirt-cheap-land middle-of-nowhere thing, too. Of course, they're ugly and couldn't possibly be mistaken for Thoreau's cabin.
Your pop-up camper approach seems sensible (though I, also with a family of four, can't imagine living quite that small full-time without going insane—a few weeks a year, sure) but it's not the kind of thing you see blog posts gushing about, covered by documentaries, or featured on magazine covers.
[1] Class, almost certainly; trailer park = white trash redneck, "tiny house" = creative class, educated.
It's a long angst-dripping screed lamenting the extreme data connectivity of today, failing to note three critical points: (A) the connectivity is as vital to "life as we know it" as your nervous system is to your body, (B) he lives it by choice, and (C) he can unplug if he wants to.
He fails to notice that "we" is not universal. For high-tech types living in crowded cities, yes, but there are a whole lotta people much less, and even un-, connected to the Web.
He fails to notice that the connectivity he laments is critical to maintaining life as he knows it. What he takes for granted, the symbiotic consequence of extreme data proliferation. Take away the interconnectedness that scares him, and he has few options beyond tilling the ground and harvesting his own food.
He fails to notice the choices he has. Going only so far as locking the door & smashing the phone, he laments the data-driven world still exists just feet away. Newsflash: there is life outside the blue/red[1] border.
He fails to notice that disconnection is an option, to whatever degree he is comfortable with. Log out of Facebook. Avoid HN. Stop viewing social media. Most news is irrelevant. Pay in cash. Accept that disconnection means longer waits and fewer options. Realize that most of humanity throughout history, some 40 billion people, got along to what they considered "fine" without the Web.
While briefly still connected, take a look at these: http://www.zillow.com http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com https://www.google.com/#q=library+near+me http://www.mypatriotsupply.com/Articles.asp?ID=245
Quit whining. If you want to get out, you can. There is an off switch, and the disconnected life is wonderful.
[1] - if you look closely at voter precinct maps and their blue/red Democrat/Republican Left/Right Progressive/Conservative boundaries, you'll see stark & consistent delineation right at the urban/rural boundary. Cities are political archipelagos, and he's lamenting the foliage & ground, longing for the oceans he doesn't realize surround him.