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Professor Lawrence Lessig is quoted in a San Jose Mercury News article about how to achieve e-mail independence:
For Lessig, who's 47, it took the birth of his first son nearly five years ago.
"I saw that unless I did something like that," Lessig says, "it was going to be very hard to focus on what was the most interesting part of my life, which was my kids."
...
"We haven't developed the norms to reintroduce life into the world of e-mail," Lessig says. Instead, we expect each other to be always on.
Lessig thinks that will change over time. "It took a long time in the workplace for norms to develop about how people have weekends and people have vacations."
Meantime, Lessig forces the issue for a month. This year he and his family rented a beach house in Madagascar.
"We hung out," he says, "we went for long walks on the beach."
Yes, the house had a computer. But it had a slow connection, Lessig says, and a baffling Malagasy keyboard, which greatly reduced the temptation to use it.
Such little hurdles to connecting can be our allies, Lessig says. Not everyone can go to the ends of the earth to flee the digital deluge, but there are little things we can do.
When Lessig needs quality time to write he sometimes unplugs his wireless router. Just the hassle of having to plug the thing in to send an e-mail is enough to make the idea unappealing.
Eventually, he says, we'll find better ways to use our communication tools without being mindlessly tethered to them. How about software that would erect the very barrier we need to stop the e-mail response twitch?
"This would be really great software," he jokes, "to basically block you out unless you type the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence."
Today seems like the perfect day to at least get started on it.