20 Days Without a PC

My editor calls my cell phone while I'm out eating a chile relleno. It's odd to get a call from a computer magazine editor--e-mail is so much simpler. And his proposal is downright dumbfounding. Would I be willing to give up PCs and the Internet for 20 days?

The rationale behind the request: For its 20th anniversary, PC World wants to examine the PC's impact on our lives by yanking it away from someone who works and plays with computers every day. That sounds like me--I build desktops, schlep laptops, tweak Windows, download Linuxes, and (don't tell HBO) burn The Sopranos onto DVD. And I've written about technology for nearly as long as there's been a PC World.

Living without the PC would shake up my career, my leisure time--in short, my whole persona. Still, I'm curious: Would I be better off as an analog guy? I take up the challenge.

Twenty days later, I'm glad that I did. Sure, I missed Google, MapQuest, and spelling checking. But my digital exile had unexpected upsides--and it revealed how PCs controlled me, in ways I hadn't seen before. More about that later. First, a day-by-day report:

Day 1 Through Day 6

Day 1

I'm trying to deal with every last e-mail in my in-box before I shut down my home office's three computers. I print my contacts and calendar, and I send a note to friends mentioning that I'll be off e-mail but available by phone or snail mail.

Then I turn off my slim Sony Z505 laptop and lock it in my office safe for dramatic effect. I power down the two other computers as well. The Eagle has landed.

Already, I miss Google. Want a recipe for ravioli in sage cream sauce? Need to know what a grimoire is? Want to see what people think about their 1999 Audi A4 Quattro wagons with Tiptronic transmission? I did recently, and Googled my way to answers in seconds. Without the Web, it dawns on me, I'll have to work harder to learn stuff. Or live with knowing less.

Day 2

I drag my wife Betsy's IBM Selectric II typewriter in from the garage, where it's been moldering for a decade, so I can type a journal for my editor. I can't recall the last time I wrote anything longer than a brief note using anything but a PC.

I blow off some dust, and the Selectric seems to work. My 10-year-old son, Jack, starts typing up his homework, a pen-pal letter to another fourth-grader in Wyoming. Jack doesn't remember a world without computers, but he pounds on the Selectric like a pro. With no computer to fight over, will we compete for the typewriter instead?

Day 3

Blissfully free of the need to monitor my e-mail, I spend the morning goofing off at a coffee shop with friends, and then I head to the guitar store to test-drive some Stratocasters. It feels like a highly artificial vacation: PC World is paying me not to go through my usual daily grind. (Try striking that kind of a deal with your boss.) Later on, my editor cheerfully tells me that the experiment is probably costing me money--my name keeps coming up for possible PC World assignments, but nobody wants to give them to an unwired author.

Day 4

I get up early and head downstairs to the office to write in my journal. The room is incredibly peaceful--the three loud computers no longer rule the roost.

My usual background noise would consist of live-band MP3s. Instead I pull out interesting CDs and LPs I haven't listened to in years. I realize I've been downloading music faster than I can enjoy it.

The mail comes, and I discover that one of the friends I alerted to my experiment has sent me a warning note: You are in such deep &@#* if you find out you like this. He could be right. Computers and the Web are understandably pervasive forces in my life. But without them, I feel a wonderful lack of mental clutter. I could get addicted to this, or at least try to find a way to get more of it into my life.

Day 5

Hmmm--this Selectric needs work. The right-margin bell doesn't ring, so I keep running off the edge of the paper. Does anyone fix typewriters in 2003? Yup, and business appears to be thriving: I find a repair service in the Yellow Pages but must wait my turn for a house call.

Jack asks when the computer will be available again. "In a couple of weeks," I tell him. Instead of playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and cruising skateboarding-magazine sites for video clips, he actually skateboards and reads.

Day 6

My typing is improving. I crank out three pages in an hour and a half, and run off the side of the page only once. Still, it would have taken me about half that time to do the job in Word, and it would have looked a lot more professional.

Bereft of e-mail, I walk to a nearby drugstore-cum-post office, copy the pages, and mail them to my editor. Total cost of production and delivery (not including the cost of the typewriter): 67 cents. Total travel time from Boulder, Colorado, to my San Francisco-based editor: four days.

Day 8 Through Day 17

Day 8

Today we're preparing for a family trip to New Jersey. Usually I would tote my laptop to write and to check e-mail with. I'd back up its hard disk over my network before traveling, too. This time I just pack my cell phone charger. With no network hub or cables to curse at, I have no choice but to help my kids with their packing.

Day 9

We zip through airport security, as do the laptop-encumbered passengers. Waiting at the gate, I relax and read a book. If my notebook were here, I would probably be tempted to find a phone booth with a data port and compulsively check my e-mail--despite the sluggish connection, and despite the fact that I would probably just end up idly weeding the spam from my in-box.

We're flying into LaGuardia; ordinarily I'd have gone to MapQuest to get the best driving route from there to New Jersey. Instead, I call a friend for advice: the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Verrazano Bridge, then across the Goethals Bridge. In hindsight, her advice wasn't so good--the Outerbridge Crossing would have been better than the Goethals. Even a geography-savvy local can't quite match the instant precision of MapQuest.

Day 12

One of my in-laws asks me how to burn a song onto CD, something I could tell her how to do while blindfolded and locked in an isolation booth. But she hesitates to fire up the PC, claiming that it's too much effort. I suspect that she's just trying to shield me from contamination.

Our flight home is delayed. One guy appears to be watching a DVD while rocking out to wild music at the same time. I feel a twinge of jealousy. Still, I'll bet his battery won't make it past Cleveland.

Day 14

When I peruse the mail that came during our trip, I find a card from a friend who's visiting Italy. He says the only reason he can take three weeks off is that Italy has Internet access points on every other corner. My e-mail about the experiment reached him in a café in Siena. Try keeping in touch like that with FedEx.

Day 16

I'm at the library for the first time in eons, in search of some car prices and Wendell Berry's essay "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," both things that I could have found in moments with Google.

I hunt for the card catalog, but it's not there. Turns out the library has replaced it with PCs that access an interlibrary network. I ask the reference librarian to look up a few books for me, since, um, I'm not much good at computers. She's happy to oblige. I ask if I can call the reference desk later for a car price. "Sure," she says. "Try asking us anything." An uneasy moment of silence passes while I imagine a thousand things I will never ask a librarian.

In the evening I read Wendell Berry, a writer who also works his Kentucky farm using horses. He states that it is his first duty "to reduce, so far as I can, my own consumption," and complains that a computer won't make him a better writer. But no one has said that a PC will make you a better writer, I think to myself. He allows that "a computer will help you to write faster, easier, and more" but asks, "Do I, then, want to write faster, easier, and more? No." That's fine for Wendell Berry. Not all of us can afford to farm with horses, though. I'd like to write better and write faster, easier, and more.

Day 17

Jim, the Selectric repairman, comes by. IBM built its last Selectric in 1985, but he says that the machines are still widely used to fill out preprinted forms. As he toils, he recommends nutritional supplements for my tendinitis, and tells me about the 25th Infantry's December 1967 campaign in Vietnam (he's a vet).

Afterward I head to an appointment with Tina, a therapist who specializes in assisting computer addicts. My own tech cravings are now in check, so I interview her about computer addiction--including her own compulsive playing of the puzzle game Tetris. She knew she had a problem when her husband pointed out that her Tetris sessions were running longer than 5 hours.

One day, as she was talking with a patient, she began to see phantom Tetris blocks falling into place in the air in front of her. "That's when I said, 'no more,'" she remembers.

Her advice for those who love computers too much? First, find out what that wonderful feeling is that comes from using the PC. "People are often very reluctant to talk about it," she says. She encourages patients to find other ways of getting the same feeling. "I'm not asking them to give up the computer, I'm asking them to try this other [way]," she adds.

Day 21

The time has come to reenter the 21st century. I take the Sony out of the safe, boot it up, and start downloading mail. I find more than 2000 messages--including 1571 pieces of unsolicited commercial e-mail. Hallelujah, baby, this is productivity.

I spend much of the next 48 hours weeding through the non-junk messages. There are two that I regret not having seen earlier. In one, an editor needs me to review a column before it goes to the printer--and it needs to happen right away. (Oops.) In the other, a long-lost friend has found me. (We later swap summaries of our families and work.)

It's nice in some respects to be back writing in Word, sending and receiving e-mail, and catching up on the latest news. But I also feel like I've lost something.

In a thousand subtle ways, technology accelerates the pace of life. That's not an unalloyed virtue. Spend an afternoon away from your in-box, and folks wonder if you've dropped off the face of the earth. You produce more work and consume more entertainment and information because...well, because you can.

Simultaneously, the PC's complexity robs us of time. I'm not talking just about spam and buggy software. I ponder the labor that I sink into downloading pirated Sopranos episodes from the Net. As good as the show is, I'm not sure if the effort of trolling newsgroups, tracking down files, and stitching them into a watchable video is worth it. Buying a DVD wouldn't just be more legit; it would be a lot simpler.

Part of me wants to shove the laptop back in the safe. I don't--but I do vow to demote the PC a bit from its position of central importance in my life. Maybe I'll close most of my e-mail addresses. I may read one news service instead of five. I might even get rid of a computer or two.

In the end, 20 days without a PC wasn't long enough to permit a final verdict on the culmination of centuries of progress in everything from mathematics to mechanical engineering to typography. Even so, I would happily do it all over again. And maybe one of these days, I will.

Contributing Editor Scott Spanbauer started in the PC World mail room in 1984. David J. Lake is an online indexer for PC World.

Vital Stats: Life With (and Without) the PC

To a well-wired American, 20 days without a PC may sound like sensory deprivation. But it's easy to forget how recently computers and the Web ingrained themselves into our lives--and how much of the world still lives without them.

--David J. Lake

Vital Stats: Digital Exile by the Numbers

Herewith some revealing factoids about my experiment, with apologies to Harper's Index.

--Scott Spanbauer