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Now, this is a discussion I could not miss! ;)
(I suspect this is going to be a long one. Sorry in advanced and I warned you.)
I decided to write this rather unstructured stream of consciousness after having read these two entries:
To put myself in some context, I've been a follower/watcher of the ephemeral offline movement for years already. I've been a part of the relatively known NoSurf movement plus some others, read most of the related books, tried a lot of different techniques. I even consider myself an ideological Neo-Luddite to an extent.
I say "to an extent" because, like all of us, I'm a child of early 90's who remembers the times "before" but is just as trapped into the web of today. As much as I understand and share the longing for staying off the grid, at the same time my brain is in love with the computers and programming, which ensures that I always sit on the fence. It's a love-hate relationship with the Internet in particular and the technology at large, a condition which is as self-contradcting and ironic as it is unavoidable. I hope all of this kind of explains where I'm coming from on this topic.
First of all, I can't agree that Stack's essay was any insulting or harsh. It was rather balanced, and after all, I can only welcome differing opinions to the discourse.
> Mirroring online material locally sounds like you are still online, using a loophole. Is it offline?
This is a good point actually. I didn't pick up on the offline AV-98 version which is famous on Gemini now, but I tried the GMI->EPUB approach (actually, I wrote such a script a couple of days before another version first emerge on Antenna, and mine was inferior, so I never used or advertized it really). So, yeah, there's this tendency of "I will take the content from online and consume it in the offline context".
I mean to say, Stack's article is thought-provoking, so below I will outline my own thoughts on this matter.
Magymagy replies by not agreeing with Stack, which I too can understand. (By the way, thanks for finding my online/offline mode interesting! I must admit that since I wrote that article, I really rarely used it, because I always had something to do online. Ironically, this only adds importance to the discussion: why is that that I can hardly find a minute to be offline?)
Magymagy correctly points out that the terminology in question is rather vague. It all boils down to the questions of "What exactly is online?" "What is offline?" and "Which is better?" None of the questions are simple as such.
It might seem counterintuitive to limit oneself. Yet, there's a long tradition of doing exactly that throughout the human history. Most of it, but certainly not all of it comes from religion (asceticism in Christianity, similar practices in, say, Buddhism). A lot of it is phylosophical and/or intellectual (Stoicism, for instance, or Cynicism if you like it hard). Much of it, though, is purely practical (withholding from alcohol, smoking, and other things that can be both pleasant and detrimental to a person).
Since there's a clear demand for limiting oneself from being "online", obviously we could pinpoint different facets of this desire. Practically, it's a desire to abstain or limit something that is both pleasant and detrimental. Spiritually/phylosophically, it's a desire to abstain from something that is "impure". These might also intertwine, but it's a whole different topic.
There's Internet. More broadly, there's technologies of remote interconnectedness (TV, radio, IoT, VR, etc-etc.)
I think that "being online" is not a discrete condition. It's a continuum that has its' roots in the earliest endeavors of technology. Not only that: one could even split into several different continuums:
Continuum of virtuality. From being mentally engaged in a completely virtual reality (VR) <--> to being mentally engaged in a completely "physical" reality (PR).
Continuum of media. From being envolved with immersive 3d graphics <--> to engaging with pure text <--> to not engaging with information at all.
Continuum of connection. From being connected to something in full real-time <--> to only sporadically connecting to something to get information <--> to not being connected to anything at all. (megymagy's semi-offline, quasi-online etc).
Continuum of obligation. From having obilgations that mean that you need to be connected no matter and always <--> to not having any obligations that require you to ever connect to anything.
Continuum of interactivity. From constantly interacting with someone <--> to just doing your thing by yourself.
Continuum of accessibility. From being in a situation where you can access any virtual reality anytime and with ease <--> to being unable to interact with anything by the world of physical matter.
I know these are rather abstract, but if we are to dissect such a complex phenomenon as "being online", we ought to first understand the components in an abstract manner.
Any activity can be kind of measured using them. Let's have some examples.
Consider you are a leader of a clan in a very competitive online game that takes place in an advanced virtual reality. I think this is as "online" as it can ever get, because it's 100% of virtuality, 100% of media, 100% of connection and 100% of obligation and interactivity and accessibility.
Consider you are washing your dishes in a remote offgrid hut. It's 0% by all continuums, you are as offline as you can be.
Everything else is kind of in between.
With this in mind, we can dissect what different angles of "trying to be more offline" essentially are.
Making an offline Gemini browser is an endeavor of moving down along the continuums of virtuality, connection and, perhaps, accessibility (you can use it even if your Internet connection is broken, for instance).
What about preferring Gemini over Internet is general? That moves you down the continuums of media and (by the protocol design) of interactivity.
HTML to Epub? Same as the AV98 fork, with a bonus that you won't even need a computer to read (accessibility continuum).
The big idea is that people have different ideas of being less connected. Some ditch smartphones for feature phones, and that's going down one set of axes; some stop playing online games and binge-watching videos - and that's a different set of axes/continuums. As you can see, the issue is multi-faceted.
For Stack, the problem with some of the approaches is that they don't move you down along the interactivity, obligation and accessibility axes. You make offline compilations of Gemini capsules? Well, you still need to have access to Gemini to actually make them. You still need to connect to it from time to time to make new ones. You still need others to create the capsules and gemlogs for you to read. See? It's not _that_ offline - unlike "baking pastries, cooking delicious things, watching TV... etc"
Watching TV, by the way, isn't really that offline. You need access to network, it's just a different network this time. Cellular network is a network too. Radio is a network. So, watching TV is just going down some continuums and not others. You're not completely offline unless you're sitting on a chair in an isolated cave.
So, Stack advices that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. But what's the baby, and what's the bathwater? Is the distinction objective or subjective?
I'd dare say that there are different reasons to limit oneself depending on the continuum.
We are creations of physical world and not bare brains in glass containers connected to the Matrix. As biological creatures, we find it hard to adapt to the new virtual reality: evolution is slow, progress is fast. It boils down to the fact the we ought to be connected to out physical reality, physical world, physical bodies. This is where we exist, live, love, feel, eat and drink, sleep and die. The more we engage with virtuality, the more do we disconnect from the reality outside of the Matrix. I know, I know, this point is neglected by many as mere old man's grumbling... But I'm not that old, hey, and yet I can understand that, and younger people can understand that too, sometimes even more acutely than us - because they live in a world even more affected by virtuality.
This is why I think Meta is such a bad idea. Virtual reality can never replace the physical realm. True, it can be helpful. But also it can be a destination of endless escapism, even more than what we see today.
Creating a reality that is smoother, glossier and more seductive than the one we have is dangerous because we, some of us, might not want to get back. This happens a lot already, this is only going to get worse. Do you know the feeling of not wanting to leave your videogame because you need to go and cook, pay bills, go to work or whatever?
Going down this axis means being more alive and in tune with oneself and the world around us. I know many will argue against this point, but isn't it worth at least pondering over?
The flashier the media, the more addictive it is. The difference between reading a paper book and watching a bright and colorful video clip? The amount and addictiveness of the pleasure influxes that you get. The amount of getting hooked. Binge watching videos is a thing. Binge reading is, too, a thing of course, but a much less prevalent one, and reading also lacks the unfortunate consequence of diminishing human attention span.
Hint: flashy graphics and carefully chosen colors are not always so addictive due to just random chance. Sometimes it's intentional.
Going down the continuum of media means cutting the distraction and the addiction and adding to substance and streamlined acquisition of knowledge. This is a big part of appeal of Gemini, for example.
I think I should adress the difference between this one and the Continuum of virtuality. It's basically about how the place you connect relates to physical reality versus how frequent this connection is. Continuum of virtuality is virtual game with non-existent characters versus sharing photos from real life. Continuum of connection is doing it all day versus doing it for a couple of minutes.
Consequently, both are about fighting your escapism, in terms of quality (cont. of virtuality) and in terms of quantity (cont. of connection).
It's the difference between writing your blog posts because you want to say something, and writing your blog posts because you have a schedule and you need to write every day, and oh my god you don't even have anything to write about but you HAVE to.
A lot of us (me included) are obligated to stay online for a considerable period of time due to our work. All of a sudden, the question now has social and economical facets to it.
Going down on the continuum of obligation is not always fully in our hands, and sometimes has more to do with how our society operates at large.
We can get addicted to interactivity. Hint: likes, thumbs up and all such are parts of the mechanism to feed and hijack our need for approval.
It's not only this though: it boils down to whether we're doing the thing in question on our own, or we are interacting with anyone else. Reading a website is non-interactive, indulging in comment section holywars is.
It's also not necessarily bad: talking to your relative by phone is 100% interactive but not really something you would want to cut. This is why I say that the continuums should be taken into account in context.
Imagine you don't have Internet access at home. None at all, nil, nada. Doesn't it feel different? Even if you're just reading a physical book lying on a sofa, there's a difference: you feel the lack of this _thing_ at the back of your mind, which is always there telling you that you _could_ go online whenever you wanted.
When you have access to the Internet, for example, there's this tingling, sometimes itching, sometimes impossible to fight against. And so you put your book down and take out your smartphone, and so the online world wins once more.
To address the initial question - is there any "offline fallacy"? I'm inclined to say no. There is advantage to try and approach the "offline" side of each of the continuums I've mentioned. But to each his own - and it's important to know what are your weak points, what do you need to limit, where do you need to cut down. And so there will be techniques that work for ones and don't work for others.
...But, above all of that, we shouldn't forget the bigger thing, the elephant in the room. While with every technology there are pros and cons to being involved with it, don't forget that pros don't necessarily outweigh the cons.
There are pros and cons to social networks. But if you agree that cons outweigh the pros - then you should agree that we would be better off if the phenomenon ceased to exist. And with that in mind, it might be your inclination to cut off the ties with it completely. It's feasible when your bottom line is that the social media shouldn't exist.
But do the Web's pros at large outweigh the cons?
Do the Internet pros at large outweigh the cons?
Do the computer's pros at large outweigh the cons?
Depending on how deeply you ponder these questions, the answers can get more and more surprising and unpleasant, and living in line with your own opinions can become more and more difficult. Are we brave enough to consider these questions with all the honesty and rigor they require? Are we brave enough to continue asking even deeper questions?
But that's a whole different story, so I'll leave that be.
-- Response ended
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