Every time I see a post like this (including Paul Miller over at the Verge), it reminds me of an obese person suddenly deciding to go anorexic. You know what the problem is? It's not the food. It's self-control, plain and simple.
For the science, some of it quite shocking, check out this great lecture series http://www.youtube.com/course?list=PL4FD135EA45DEEBB6&fe...
This lecture in particular, about rat studies, is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cli0RJQiPc
I would call this "self control", which is exactly what the GP was advocating.
Of course, you'd be risking dying of hunger to do so, just as you'd be risking intellectual death by cutting off the internet.
Give me a fucking break. I know many people (even several programmers) without an internet connection at home, and none of them are at any sort of risk of “intellectual death”.
It's the people that get their "information" from daily doses of "I saw it on the internet" that worry me, to be honest. Some people I know that spend the most time on the internet seem able to tell you a lot of stuff they read and saw, but are not able to apply much intellect to it.
"Neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that, even as adults, our brains are very plastic," Carr explains. "They're very malleable, they adapt at the cellular level to whatever we happen to be doing. And so the more time we spend surfing, and skimming, and scanning ... the more adept we become at that mode of thinking."
I highly recommend The Shallows[1]. It's a look at the way the internet is changing our brains. It really might be a good idea to limit exposure to the internet. As a programmer and geek it's worth spending some time thinking about these questions and least being aware of the affects of the medium.
Just focusing on self-control is very hard. Take smoking, for instance -- it's hard to just "cut down" when that temptation is always there.