That is the question I wrestled with before leaving on a week-long trip to Costa Rica.
Even though there’s mounting evidence to suggest that digital downtime can provide a healthy break for our brains, the thought of not being in constant communication seemed almost too foreign, too scary, even, to enjoy.
As the days ticked down to my departure, I tried to decide whether I should simply leave my phone at home or bring it and banish it to some remote zippered corner of my suitcase.
Typically when I travel, my iPhone doubles as my camera and camcorder. But I worried that it’d be hard to resist posting a particularly gorgeous shot to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the likes.
But as it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about it — the decision was made for me. I wasn’t able to get an Internet connection on my phone during the entire time abroad.
...On the trip back to New York, I prided myself on the notion that I’d been reformed, reconditioned to no longer weigh the merit of my experiences by the number of likes, favorites and shares that each photo, update and tweet earned.
That is of course, until I touched down in Miami for a layover. I immediately whipped out my phone and began checking in, posting updates and missives to Twitter and sending a couple photos through to Tumblr. But I didn’t forget the liberating feeling of no access, the freedom from digital obligations.
When travelling in London this weekend I was subjected to the same forced disconnectivity, and found myself wondering about the same question of whether or not it's a good thing to be disconnected.
I ultimately decided that it's never been the ability to "weigh the merit of my experiences by the number of likes, favorites" etc that ever drives me to constantly stay connected. Rather, it was more that without connection I lost the ability to put that small bit more value into the things I was doing.
Simple things like being able to better understand where I'm at in relation to other areas on a map and solidify that picture in my head more easily. Being able to get a bit of history on a monument or neighborhood in front of me that others around may not necessarily have on their mind. Storing a note away about a place I had a nice beer at by logging it on foursquare.
"Augmenting reality" is something humans have been doing for ages with technology; it has a lot less to do with the internet as the subtext tends to imply when we talk about "being too dependent on technology."
The worry seems to be that technology distracts us from the world around us, but as with most things there's a useful way to use tools and then there are also less useful ways to use tools. Inevitably there will be those who find themselves in one boat or the other. I find it hard to make the blanket statement "connectivity and vacations should not go together."
