Reading the posts this week inspired me to design a new assignment -- but in the interests of fairness I won't subject you guys to it. The challenge of the assignment would be to go "offline" for a week. Part of this would involve banning personal digital devices like iPods, cell phones, PDAs, and whatever else you folks carry around (personal satellite radio, anyone?). The big deprivation would of course be computer-mediated communication. But instead of simply banning use of email, chat, and Web-surfing, for example, the assignment would mandate no computer use of any kind (word processing, gaming, running a spreadsheet) at any computer either owned by you, present in your household, open to you by virtue of where you work, or open to you by virtue of where you go to school (eg. no use of UW computer labs). The only exception open to you for using a computer? The public library.
What do you think, should I put this in next year's syllabus?
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I really like the sound of that assignment...although it would be so difficult. It would help you see which parts of being online or digital were impossible to give up--which were inconvenient to give up--which made you mad--etc.
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