My advice after a year without tech: rewild yourself | Mark Boyle

We can't all go and live in the woods, of course. But if we resist debt, resist gadgets, and reconnect with nature, the world might just changeHaving once been an early adopter of tech, I was an unlikely early rejector. But it has now been over a year since I have phoned my family or friends, logged on to antisocial media, sent a text message, checked email, browsed online, took a photograph or listened to electronic music. Living and working on a smallholding without electricity, fossil fuels or running water, the last year has taught me much about the natural world, society, the state of our shared culture, and what it means to be human in a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.My reasons for unplugging, during that time, haven't so much changed as shifted in importance. My primary motives were - and still are - ecological. The logic was simple enough. Even if used minimally, a single smartphone (or toaster, internet server, solar panel, sex robot) relies on the entire industrial megamachine for its production, marketing and consumption. Continue reading...