escapees

The preceding page considered claims that the net is in imminent danger and needs to be 'saved'. This page considers equally romantic notions that people need to be saved from the net.

It supplements the discussion of dystopias and addiction.

     introduction

The enthusiasts behind global Shutdown Day exhort people to "turn off technology" in 3 May.

The shutdown is an attempt to

spread awareness about the pitfalls and dangers that lie in the extended and unnecessary use of, and exposure to television, computers and computing equipment.

The organisers claim that

The lives of young children, teenagers, and adults are being dramatically altered by modern technology, which is turning them into social outcasts. The newer generation of people that are addicted to modern technology that substitutes for social interaction are failing to realize that there is indeed a natural physical world out there to be enjoyed.

That is a romantic notion, an extension of traditional anxieties about -

• social alienation and the culturally or morally-corrosive effects of 'new media'
• addiction to the cinema, television, mobile phones and non-electronic media such as comics
• physical injury through exposure to emissions from telegraph lines, valve radios, televisions and other devises (eg the 'electrosmog' discussed elsewhere on this site)

On occasion it has been accompanied about claims of the political virtues of "living off-grid", ie evading supposedly pervasive surveillance by the dark forces of the state, commercialism or creatures from another planet.

'No internet' days are an echo of 'no television' days - in for for example South Korea during 1993 and Indonesia during 2006 - where adults and children were exhorted to free themselves for the tyranny of the box, claimed to result in ills such as obesity, violence, poor "brain development", bad manners and disrespect for traditional culture.

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