Fascinating piece by The Verge on our of their writers who left the Internet for a year.
2 replies on “Finding Paul Miller”
I read/watched this this afternoon and am a little underwhelmed/frustrated by the whole thing. And disappointed. While it certainly shows a lot of humility to be so honest with the world, Paul opened up about the fact that he has issues which are much deeper than simply relying on the Internet for everything — particularly social interactions. Though it really feels like he spent a year playing his X-Box and a couple of weeks at the end driving (being driven) a few miles through mid-America.
He learned that he has issues and needs help.
It didn’t take him a year to figure that out. Maybe he should have just taken some time off before, for shorter spells — though I understand it would be quite difficult being a tech writer and being so deeply immersed in it all.
I guess it’s disappointing in a sad way that he wasn’t able to achieve more; all the things that he had set out to do (that Great American Novel, to smell the flowers and meet people — where was all of that?). A year is a very long time, after all.
While it may sound hypocritcal coming from someone who uses the internet a lot — I know when to take time off, and certainly use it differently than even six months ago — for better or worse.
A follow-up to this story will be important I feel. Does he use the Internet differently now, or is he consuming ALL the internet? — as jokingly referenced by the writer he had a lot of admiration for in the video?. It’s certainly good to take a step back every so often.
I hear ya Phil. His issues seem to have been exacerbated by his use of the web than rather the cause. He’s a difficult character to empathise with so I’d be interested to read follow ups. The Verge were smart to feature the piece as I’m sure they’re getting a lot of traffic out of it.
2 replies on “Finding Paul Miller”
I read/watched this this afternoon and am a little underwhelmed/frustrated by the whole thing. And disappointed. While it certainly shows a lot of humility to be so honest with the world, Paul opened up about the fact that he has issues which are much deeper than simply relying on the Internet for everything — particularly social interactions. Though it really feels like he spent a year playing his X-Box and a couple of weeks at the end driving (being driven) a few miles through mid-America.
He learned that he has issues and needs help.
It didn’t take him a year to figure that out. Maybe he should have just taken some time off before, for shorter spells — though I understand it would be quite difficult being a tech writer and being so deeply immersed in it all.
I guess it’s disappointing in a sad way that he wasn’t able to achieve more; all the things that he had set out to do (that Great American Novel, to smell the flowers and meet people — where was all of that?). A year is a very long time, after all.
While it may sound hypocritcal coming from someone who uses the internet a lot — I know when to take time off, and certainly use it differently than even six months ago — for better or worse.
A follow-up to this story will be important I feel. Does he use the Internet differently now, or is he consuming ALL the internet? — as jokingly referenced by the writer he had a lot of admiration for in the video?. It’s certainly good to take a step back every so often.
I hear ya Phil. His issues seem to have been exacerbated by his use of the web than rather the cause. He’s a difficult character to empathise with so I’d be interested to read follow ups. The Verge were smart to feature the piece as I’m sure they’re getting a lot of traffic out of it.