A year without internet: One man's fascinating journey
"I wanted a break from modern life — the hamster wheel of an email inbox, the constant flood of WWW information which drowned out my sanity. I wanted to escape."
One year ago today, The Verge's Senior Technology Editor Paul Miller unplugged his Ethernet cable, disconnected his Wi-Fi, swapped his smartphone for a dumbphone, and gave up the internet cold turkey. Since then, he's continued his web-free existence by filing numerous stories about his offline experiences via USB drives. He even set up a snail-mail P.O. box for reader comments. Through it all, readers wondered: Once his year-long personal experiment was over, would Miller return to the web enlightened, or ravaged? Was he just trolling us? How would he remember all his passwords? And how, one outspoken reader wondered, would Miller obtain porn without the internet?
At last, we have at least some of the answers, as Miller has returned to the world wide web. Here, a sampling of his reflections:
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