[Infowarrior] - No cellphone? No BlackBerry? No e-mail? No way? (It's true.)

[Richard Forno]

No cellphone? No BlackBerry? No e-mail? No way? (It's true.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070111/tc_usatoday/nocellphonenoblackberr
ynoemailnowayitstrue

By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO - Joan Brady can't even count the number of computers that
friends have foisted upon her over the years. Laptops. Desktops. Monitors.
It's as if they can't help themselves, as if they just can't accept her for
who she is: a woman who dares to live without a PC in the heart of
Techtropolis.

"I just don't need it," says Brady, 52, a personal chef and party clown.

No, she doesn't e-mail. And, really, she does not need you to call her and
read the latest e-mail joke to her. She knows what she's missing, and she's
grateful for it every day.

Call Brady a "tech-no," a member of a dwindling - some might say
occasionally oppressed - minority who are resisting the worldwide movement
to be constantly connected. They're just saying no to the very technologies
that increasingly are captivating most everybody else.

Some tech-no's shun e-mail. Others don't use the Web or, like Brady, don't
even have a computer. Many avoid cellphones. In a few rare cases, people say
no to just about all of it.

Even tech-loving teens and twentysomethings are starting to think twice.
They might use the Internet (93% of American teens ages 12 to 17 do,
according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project), but a few are
turning away from the same social networking sites with which their peers
are obsessed.

By choice, Shane Bugeja, 16, of Columbus, Ohio, doesn't have a Facebook or
MySpace page. "I don't find it interesting - having someone reading about
you, and you don't know them," he says.

That makes him unusual; 55% of online kids (51% of all teens) ages 12 to 17
have a social networking site, says Pew, and 64% of online teens ages 15 to
17 have one.

"You are not alone if you don't have one of these profiles, but you are
bucking a trend," says Amanda Lenhart of Pew.

"I haven't found anybody who's sort of like me," Bugeja says. "Doing what
everyone else is doing is not necessarily an attractive thing."

It is unclear how many tech-no's there are, but they are becoming an
endangered species in a nation in which 81% of adults 18 to 64 are Internet
users and 78% use cellphones, according to Pew.

These are not people avoiding the latest technologies because of poverty,
age or lack of education.

Tech-no's "are making a conscious decision to say no to certain things,"
says Larry Rosen, a professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills
and author of TechnoStress.

"It's not a snap decision. They usually have a good reason. And it's not
that they're giving up everything. We're not going back to the Luddite era.
These people are using (only) what they absolutely feel like they need."

They might even be a sign of what is to come.

"It is going to become very fashionable at some point to be disconnected,"
Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo predicts. "There are going to be people
who wear their disconnectivity like a badge."

'Don't think I'm missing out'

Alan Moore, 53, a writer in Northampton, England, has no e-mail, no Web
access, no cellphone. His PC is a "glorified typewriter."

He knows all about blogs and Google and MySpace; an imposter even put up a
MySpace page in his name. He understands the convenience of cellphones and
knows that people can have hundreds of channels on their TVs rather than his
few broadcast ones.

Despite this, "I don't think I'm missing out."

Instead of Googling every question, he refers to books. Instead of toting a
cellphone on a walk, he just walks. "Not being able to be phoned when I'm
out: that is blissful," he says.

"We live in a culture where we are completely swamped with information. It's
like some invisible fluid. I try to control the flow of information through
my life."

David Levy, a professor in the Information School at the University of
Washington in Seattle, also tries to control the flow. An observant Jew, he
shuts everything down for the Sabbath from Friday at sundown to Saturday
night.

He recommends disconnecting once in a while to others, too. "The
contemplative dimension of my life is very important to me," he says.

But would he ever consider giving up the Net entirely? "Absolutely not, and
I wouldn't want to," he says. "The Web is a fantastic tool."

But unplugging is getting harder for most people to do - even for a little
while.

"I don't think you can be disconnected," says Jim Taylor, vice president of
the Harrison Group, a marketing and strategic research consulting firm in
Waterbury, Conn. It's just about impossible "if you are employed, if people
depend on you, if your children are out in the world."

People who don't do e-mail increasingly miss all kinds of things, from
family photo albums and special-interest discussion groups to party
invitations; 125 million people got e-mail invitations via Evite in 2005
alone, the company says.

That doesn't bother Brady: "If they care whether I'm there or not, they can
call me," she says.

Or send a letter - the kind with stamps.

People who never go on the Web also miss out on a growing facet of American
culture, such as Google and blogs and Craigslist and YouTube; they can't
shop online or find out more about their favorite TV characters.

They miss instant access to news and never see the viral videos everybody
else is talking about and forwarding to their friends.

100% tech-no?

Even if they don't care much about popular culture, people without
cellphones or e-mail or buddy lists miss out on a world in which friends and
family increasingly can get in touch instantly, whether there's an emergency
or they just want you to know they're thinking about you.

That's why these days, most tech-no's find it's nearly impossible to stay
away 100%.

John Mashburn, 57, a lawyer from Columbus, Ohio, reads paper maps instead of
Googling directions. He couldn't e-mail someone "if my life depended on it,"
he says. However, he has an office staff and a wife who will, if necessary,
print out e-mails for him to read.

Even San Francisco chef Brady says she sometimes asks her roommate or
8-year-old niece to look up information online for her. One recent night she
even spent three hours looking at YouTube videos on her roommate's laptop.

But being a tech-no can have a high social cost.

When Brady tells people she doesn't have e-mail, many "kind of look at me
like I'm crazy," she says. "One (now ex-) friend got drunk and went on and
on about how I was very arrogant, and it wasn't very attractive to be
anti-computer - not even charming or funny anymore. I had to get with it. I
looked like a stupid idiot. Like some kind of weird little barbarian."

When she told other friends about the outburst, they were sympathetic. With
her critic.

"They said, 'Well, you know, he has a point. There's nothing to be proud
of.' "

E-mails just not 'useful'

Kevin Kertes, 41, a music promoter from Woodland Hills, Calif., has a
similar frustration: his brother Jeffrey, 38, a clinical psychologist in
metropolitan Detroit.

Jeffrey Kertes has a PDA, a pager and a computer. But he only got an e-mail
address six months ago after his brother and others hounded him for years.
Still, he checks it only "every couple of weeks."

"I'm not opposed," he says, but "I don't find e-mails useful. I like talking
to people. I like to hear their tone, their laugh. I can't get that from
e-mail. The message is lost."

He does have a cellphone, but you generally can't reach him on it; he only
turns it on when he needs to make a call.

"I've sent e-mails to him but have never got a response back," Kevin Kertes
says. "It's frustrating. If I want to talk to him privately or there's an
urgent matter, I have to go through his wife."

But as much as he complains, he acknowledges that his brother "is not at the
mercy of it like we are. You can't leave your house without a cellphone.
Hell freezes over. You freak out."

He also has a BlackBerry. "I check it all the time. But why? Nothing urgent
ever comes over it."

Says the Harrison Group's Taylor: "The advantages in society of
connectedness are astonishing. The difficulty is the inability of people to
disconnect. Some become addicted to being gotten to; for most of us, it's a
bit of a burden."

That's pretty much how Brady's roommate feels.

Mark Hawkins, 42, works for an Internet company, so he's connected nearly
all the time. He says he really doesn't mind helping Brady; in fact, he
admires her.

"I like technology, and I like being on top of all the new things that are
happening," he says. "But there's a part of me that's like, 'Oh my gosh, get
out of here.' I have a love-hate relationship with it, really.

"I think so many people feel that technology holds all these answers for us,
and if you're not embracing it, you're somehow missing out on this key to
life or something."

He's amused that people try to give Brady their hand-me-down technology:
"It's like they're all lining up to give her access to this world that she
has made a conscious decision to just not fall into."

Her attitude "keeps things real for me," he says.

"It's so easy to get caught up in all of it. It's refreshing to know that
hey, you don't have to. You can make choices in life to, you know, do things
however you want."