[Fury]

A year without internet

Props to this guy.

[Mongoose]

I sure as hell couldn't do it.  Though from the way it turned out for him, I'm not sure it'd be a good thing in the first place.

[CommanderDJ]

Wow, that takes some determination. No matter how he feels about it, he definitely learned a lot, by the sounds of the article.

[pecenipicek]

I love how quickly it degenerated into wallowing in self-pity...

[StarSlayer]

I'm sorry but, "I'm too lazy to do anything in an internet free world" doesn't garner much sympathy from me or serve as a foundation for his theory.  If anything it just sounds like he doesn't bother to be productive online or off.  The world is filled with things you can do to better yourself, help others, to be social and part of the community.  If you don't bother to engage in them and instead stay home and play MMOs by yourself then that's on you.  It would be one thing if he actually utilized his offline time to the fullest and still found checking tweets is better, but this was just a case of wasting your time.

[Dark Hunter]

I thought that was the crux of his conclusion: it wasn't the Internet making him unproductive (like so many technophobes love to suggest), but just his own personality and lack of work ethic.

[Nuke]

i can do a week or two.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yeah, I've spent long periods of time over the past 5 years either without Internet at home, or without even a computer. Though it has somewhat improved my sleeping schedule, it hasn't really changed my productivity. Instead of wandering the net, I'd just rewatch and replay the stuff that's on my hard drives. Instead of playing games/watching series, I'd just read books.

I thought I'd finally get off my ass and start actively writing stuff, which I actually happened, but not to the extent I was expecting. The only thing really affecting my 'productivity' is pretty much my willingness to do something about it, which itself is mostly influenced by my current moral, which in turn is influenced by many factors, among them the availability of an Internet connection or a computer, or what's on that computer and about a hundred other things.

[The E]

The moral of the story is that while the net may encourage some behaviours and discourage others, the choice of how to behave is still yours to make; Removing an influence like the net will not automatically change your behaviour in a profound way.

[QuantumDelta]

Hmm.

His point was indeed that he was unproductive even without the internet, and that's more to do with him as a person.
It's noteworthy that he was actually less productive without the internet, not just because of the opportunities it affords him but because the internet allows you to be /almost/ passively socially productive.
You can still be a better person while plugged in

[deathfun]

You can still be a better person while plugged in

Or so the machines that run the Matrix want you to think!

[TwentyPercentCooler]

If I was stuck without the internet, I'd probably just go ride my running bike, or if the weather sucked, wrench on my project bike. I see the internet as a hobby, not a lifestyle. But I'm getting old and crotchety. These whippersnappers these days, "Tweeting" and taking pictures of their food instead of eating it...bah, get off my lawn.