Where Work Happens If I’m not in the terminal then I’m not doing real work…I work in a full-screen terminal and don’t like to leave it. The world outside my terminal is filled with distractions, bright colours, and menus. My textual environment is where my real work happens. – Jesse Storimer
Eating the Free Lunch “GMail is slow because Google can’t afford to spend a lot on it. But people will pay for this. I’d have no problem paying $50 a month. Considering how much time I spend in email, it’s kind of scary to think how much I’d be justified in paying. At least $1000 a month. If I spend several hours a day reading and writing email, that would be a cheap way to make my life better.” – Paul Graham
Coffee Lock-in “The problem is that you bought yourself a shiny espresso machine that only takes pods distributed by the manufacturer. So even if you buy the hippie’s beans, you can’t make yourself any coffee with them because the machine won’t take them unless they’ve been shipped to the manufacturer and packaged into little special pellets.” – Reginal Braithwaite
Departing “I recently deleted Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and Flipboard from my phone, and have been very happy with the result. Today, I am deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is not a decision motivated by Lent, and I have no idea at this moment when or if I will reactivate them.” – J Ben Deaton
Olds “One thing that I find missing is discovery of non-new content. The web is completely oriented around new-thing-on-top. Our brains are also wired to get a rush from novelty. But most “news” we read really doesn’t matter. ” – Evan Williams
Friends != Content Generators “I believe we all live vicariously through the people we love and admire, we bask in their stories and their grace. To somehow conclude that it’s beneficial for us to ‘consume the information shared’ by those we love via the heavily branded and advertising-conscious proxy that is Facebook is, in fact, an insult. It’s a third–rate experience.” – Youssef Sarhan
SabbathManifesto.org “We’ve created 10 core principles completely open for your unique interpretation. We welcome you to join us as we carve a weekly timeout into our lives and to continue the momentum of the National Day of Unplugging throughout the year. On March 11, 2012”
Focus as a Small Opt-out “We can begin by mimicking the [digital] Sabbath in small, by recognizing that by dedicating time to one activity or one person, without interruption from gadgets, work, or other people, will help us slow down and connect.” – Rebecca J. Rosen,
Opting Out of Gmail “I want to continue using the Google tools I love without the risk of loosing my online identity by doing something I didn’t know was prohibited (I am still not sure why that Google Adsense account is gone), without the work involved in understanding the entire Google ecosystem to manage my privacy, and without constant distraction by the latest gadgets Google came up with. Dropping Gmail is how I achieve this.” – Neubertify
Opt-In to Happiness “All it’s cost me are LOLs and LIKES and YOUTUBE VIDEOS OF EXPLOSIONS and news about startups. It’s more than a fair trade–it’s a no brainer. And I think almost anyone with a job based on information can set up a similar life that is just as enjoyable. It might take a few years, but you can’t do it while you’re rotting online reading junk content. Get on, make the most meaningful information and connections, and then get offline. Then, live purposefully towards happiness. Because I’ve never met a person who spent their days and nights online that was happy as I am right now.” – Brian Lam