Four Gadget-less Weeks???

I'm writing this quickly because I'm about to embark on an experiment. At the urging of my editor-in-chief, Jim Louderback, and Vicki Jacobson, the executive editor who regularly edits this column, I'm going wild -- literally. Beginning today at 5 p.m. (it's around 3:30 as I write this), I will leave all technology behind and head north to spend four weeks in a remote cabin in upstate New York.

Column from PC Magazine: Living Without Technology

A couple of years ago (seems like ages ago), there was a social experiment of sorts where a guy (I think he was dubbed as Mr. Internet) who locked himself into a house and tried to live out a couple of months without going out. His only lifeline to the outside world is his Internet connection. I'm not sure what actually happened Mr. Internet but here's his probable alter ego.

A PC Magazine writer Lance Ulanoff was asked to live for four weeks without technology. I was a bit skeptical when I saw the date of the story (filed April 1, 2006) but I think this is a worthy experiment: take a geek and take away all his gadgetry and gizmo then put him in the wilderness. Well, I think it would have been hilarious if this was made into a reality show (which is on the decline the last time I checked). Anyway, his colleagues actually played him because they placed webcams around the cottage where he spent his four tech-less weeks and according to the PC Magazine Editors:

Important Editors' Note:
...Hey, Jim and Vicki here...
What a moron! So, we sent Lance's sorry butt away for four weeks to Cranberry Lake, telling him we wanted him to write some stuff about what it would be like to live without technology. In reality, all we really wanted was the use of his office for four weeks so we'd have a place to put our new Internet consultant. He went for it! Can you believe it? And it gets better. We also told him that he was free to build electronic devices from whatever he could find within 500 feet of the cabin. He bit at that one, too. Holy cow!

And here's the best part: What Lance doesn't know is that we've hidden a webcam inside the cabin, so we can see what he's up to for the next four weeks. And from the little we've seen, the feed is hysterical - better than Seinfeld reruns. We swear.

technorati tags: humor, geek, gadget-less