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xpat
Joined: 13 Mar 2008
Location: Kangnam baby
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 Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:33 pm Post subject: Could You Do This? |
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I could, though I'm sure it would not be easy.
Just think of all the ways we are connected to the net, and then having no access.
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Two families in the most connected country in the world - South Korea - have agreed to go without the internet for a week.
After a week of web-less living, our two volunteer families are back online.
Another visit from Korea Telecom's Mr Song is all it took, and with the return of the internet modems to their rightful places, the homes were rewired to the digital super-highway.
Sighs of relief all round.
Both families spoke of a major sense of inconvenience trying to navigate the complexity of modern-day Korea without it.
After just seven days, no surprise, of course, that their world didn't grind to a halt.
But our little experiment has shown how the internet has become an integral part of so many aspects of daily life here; leisure, education, transport, banking, shopping and socialising.
Yang family reading
The Yang family have rediscovered reading from books - but still want their computers back
For the Kims and the Yangs, like many other South Korean families, it takes up a large proportion of their waking hours.
Mr Kim hopes that the experience will help his children to "become more wise" in the amount of time they spend at the computer keyboard.
Mr Yang says that being cut off has allowed him to "rediscover lost time."
Would any of them recommend the experience to their friends?
"Definitely," Kim Sung-jun, Mr Kim�s eldest son, replies.
"They need to know how suffocating it can feel living without it."
Mr Yang's wife, Youm Jung-a, believes that although now happily reconnected she will change the way she uses the internet in the future.
"After finishing my morning chores I spend between two and three hours online," she tells me.
"That's time spent alone. But during this past week I've even had the time to drink tea with neighbours, so I'm going to regulate time spent online from now on."
So both families are in agreement.
For them, the experiment has highlighted how vital a tool the internet is, but also how it has come to replace other aspects of family life.
Would they give it up again?
"It would be the same as asking if you could cut off my electricity for a week," Cho Hye-sook laughs.
"Lose the internet for another seven days? It's a real no-thank-you I'm afraid. I don't want to go through this again." |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/2010/01/100129_on_off_south_korea.shtml |
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Goon-Yang
Joined: 28 May 2009
Location: Duh
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| That'd be unfair for my family. We have internet TV as well...lol. |
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xpat
Joined: 13 Mar 2008
Location: Kangnam baby
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Goon-Yang wrote: |
| That'd be unfair for my family. We have internet TV as well...lol. |
Ohh. Poor baby. You would have to watch cable TV  |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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| I just moved houses and it took the technician three days to get here. I also moved offices and my computer wasn't hooked up right away. So, this week I went one day completely internetless, and three days with none in my home. It was weird. I found myself quite bored of an evening but I would say that I would have found something to fill that time within a week. |
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tefain
Joined: 19 Sep 2007
Location: Not too far out there
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| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 2:50 am Post subject: |
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This thread is making me feel both old and sad.
Could I do it? Of course, we're not talking about running a marathon here.
Not only that, I think a lot of people need to take a good break from surfing their time away online.
Yes, I get news, information, humor, etc. from the internet, but it wouldn't be that difficult to live without it for 7 days! The horror...  |
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AsiaESLbound
Joined: 07 Jan 2010
Location: Truck Stop Missouri
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| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Could I do it? Sometimes we are forced to do what we don't want to do. Lacking a dedicated line. I don't yet have internet, but finding spotty WiFi at times and then 10 minutes here and there between classes at work. It is inconvenient to not have connectivity. |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Amateurs. I lived without the internet for two whole decades, in the 70s and 80s, and half of the 90s to boot. Top that! |
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mishlert
Joined: 13 Mar 2003
Location: On the 3rd rock from the sun
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