Trying out the New Offline Life

It was surprisingly easy.

As I wrote in a previous post, I want to spend less time online and more time in person.

The in-person part has been easy. Since I returned to Japan a month ago, I've had numerous in-person meetups, coffee dates, wonderful Japanese kaiseki meals with wonderful people, talking for hours about everything under the sun.

It's the offline time that is less clear. I've been experimenting, but these experiments raised a few important questions.

Earlier this month I took my first digital detox day – leaving the house completely offline. I was bit apprehensive, but determined to try. I left my digital camera and my Apple Watch at home. I removed the SIM card from my iPhone so I could use the iPhone camera yet stay offline.*

I packed my film camera and several lenses, and off I went.

For me, this is quite a change. I’ve always liked being on the cutting edge of new technologies; indeed it was a competitive advantage for me, having the newest tech comfortable in my hands. Am I now on the cutting edge of the digital backlash?

How did it go? Well, other than repeatedly checking my now empty wrist for the time, it was surprisingly easy. This is what we all did 20 years ago; why did it seem so daunting now?

Eventually, inspired by one of my social media friends, I bought a Seiko quartz watch of a similar vintage as my Nikon film gear. I’m fully living in the 80's now!

I have broken the spell of our digital devices. Less and less, I feel the need to be connected every waking moment. I can be offline without losing my photos or my music. I know what time it is. I know where I am and how to get where I’m going. I have money in my wallet. Any pressing message can wait until I get back home.

I want to be clear, I am still very much a digital person. My developed film goes directly into the computer for editing, output, and archiving. Every photo I share has undergone at least brightness & color adjustment, and probably cropping as well. Some images, much more than that.

I realized it’s the 24/7 online part I want to withdraw from.

Remember when we used dialup modems? You would connect only when you needed to be online, then disconnect when you were finished. I guess my ideal is something like that.

With the recent liberation of government data by Elon Musk and his hacker-kiddies in Washington, I started to consider whether my goal was freedom from the tyranny of our devices, or actually defense against surveillance capitalism and the military-industrial complex, as we used to call it back in the hippie days.

In any case, I feel I should keep my data away from governments and corporations as much as possible right now. I don’t know where things are going in Washington, but I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

This article further motivated me to be offline as much as possible:

A list of over 2000 iPhone and Android apps that secretly expose your location information without your consent was leaked onto the internet. Most of these are free games and utilities. It turns out they are not so free after all.

The author writing about this set up an iPhone without a SIM card (wifi only) and installed ONLY ONE of those apps, besides the default ones installed by Apple. What he found was distressing: https://timsh.org/tracking-myself-down-through-in-app-ads/

So what can you about all this surveillance?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco based privacy organization has published a guide to Surveillance Self-Defense. It's full of great information, tips, and tools To protect your data.

But as I read the guide, I realized that I was not trying to protect my data. I am already doing that. I have numerous hard drives with all my photographs and other important documents, in multiple locations. And I publish much of it on my website, to be enjoyed by the public.

What I want is to be left alone. To NOT be tracked. And the way to keep Big Data from gathering information about you is to not give them an opportunity to collect it to begin with. If all my devices stay home when I go out, then Google or Amazon or Elon Musk is not collecting data from them.

I realize it's nearly impossible to hide at home. Every company you've ever given your credit card to knows where you live, your wired home internet router knows its location, and your home computer broadcasts its location just like your phone does.

What I'm talking about is just being able to go out and wander around freely, without anyone knowing where you are or what you are doing. And if you want to do that, none of your connected devices can come with you.

For example, I have a few Apple AirTags, those quarter size devices that are an easy way to keep track of your stuff. They are really convenient. But how do they work? They work by continually sniffing out every iPhone in their vicinity to tell them where they are. Kind of like a friendly dog that walks up to everyone for a lick or a pat of the head. Their purpose is to track your location. And if you don't want to be tracked, they have to stay home.

My original goal was to spend one day per week or per month offline. But now I'm leaving all my connections at home several times a week. Not for an entire day, but I am now offline for hours at a time.

A few hours outside in anonymity. That's about the best we can do right now. But it's a freeing feeling. I recommend it.

* I’ve developed the following technique when using my film camera: I take another camera with me, usually the iPhone, and shoot the same picture as with the film camera. This way I have date/time and sometimes location information, as well as a temporary image I can use until the film gets developed.