The End of Alone

The "alone in the crowd" is an often-discussed phenomenon in crushing modern cultures. The wireless-wired-version is only the latest. It's not less of an option now to have alone time: just takes more courage. ...and maybe the wisdom to perceive the diminishing value of "friends" when they are counted in thousands.

An ironic impact may be the effect of elevating the "wheat" of those willing to claim their need for alone "downtime" to achieve the introverted productivity in which tasks such as hacking thrive - above the chaff of those who cannot bear to miss any social chatter (sorry, I meant 'twitter').

As my yoga teacher liked to say, "Solitude is the price of greatness."

My Gosh! This guy went on for 7 pages and all he really ended up saying was "Technology makes it harder to be truly alone and that might be a bad thing." Has anyone ever suggested the death of the print industry might be related to the fact that they go on for ages and say very little? Yeeesh.

As far as his point I don’t think it holds much weight. He makes it sound like this is some kind of societal problem that individuals can’t do anything about. But the reality is it’s an issue of individual self control. If you want to be alone than you should turn off the Blackberry. You being alone is simply a function of you making the choice to be alone. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world does.

There are legitimate problems that are caused by the doors that technology opens but this just isn’t one of them.

People only try to contact you all the time & expect you to be available if you give them that expectation. Tell your coworkers that you're not going to be checking email on weekends. Tell your friends that you don't answer your phone after X:00pm. Or just don't answer it. The calls will stop.

Almost everything can wait a couple hours, or until the next day. Personally, I don't like being perpetually connected. Often I'll go for a long jog, or bike ride, strangely happy about the fact that no one can contact me for the next hour or two, even if they wanted.

Set your boundaries, or they will be set for you.

This definitely isn't a problem just for technology, it's a broader symptom of modern society and culture. For example, I've heard New York is one of the worst places to get lonely or to be new to the city because it feels even more disorienting to not know anyone when you're surrounded by millions of people, and pedestrians at that rather than commuters in cars.

Technology definitely can help instead of hurt, you just need to seek out things that can help increase facetime and meeting new friends rather than getting your brain sucked in online for the entire night. Facebook events and meetup come to mind.