The Latest at Goethe

How much does the Internet dominate our lives today? What would happen if we were to go offline for months? Journalist Alex Rühle tried it. In the interview, he reports of a self-experiment with no net.

You made your decision to experiment by going offline for six months during a train ride without access to the web. You enjoyed the hours of freedom...

Yes, it made me notice how annoying this rattling email is, how it frazzles your edges. Then there were two reasons that led to the experiment: I was feeling more and more smothered under this contemporary email roller. Then there was the ideologically overloaded Internet debate in Germany: There are those who immediately begin shooting off their machine gun if you voice your concerns that the Internet is not only the biggest silver bullet of humanity, but also is intrinsically problematic. Then there are those who demonize the Internet and believe that without the World Wide Web, humanity would again be self-determined and ideally enlightened. I think both positions are bizarre. And then I thought to myself: I could try it.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to just enter a monastery for six months?

That would have been an entirely different experiment. I wanted to see what would change in my everyday life. I wanted to remain in my normal life and observe what happens if you just cut the cord.

Another of the aims of the experiment was to free yourself from the constant pressure of being available that possession of a smart phone can involve. Did it work?

I certainly had more private time. I read a lot more in the evening and spent my time more quietly. Yet this was also linked to the fact that I had four weeks at a time off work in the meantime. I think we need to put the Internet in a specific spot like the piece of a puzzle: Ultimately it does help us keep pace with the quickening speed of our lives today. We need email and the web for that.

Before the experiment, as you describe it, you were an Internet junkie who would secretly check his email quickly at night in the hallway “like a delta alcoholic.”

It’s so dangerous because this is where the work ethic and narcissism mix so well. Good for the dealer, you might say! You’re just doing your job, checking that inbox again and again – of course, it’s important for my work – but at the same time these messages are like comfort food for the ego. Someone’s thinking of me – it makes you feel important in a way. Someone is addressing something to me! At least for me that is a very strong mechanism.

What was your work routine like during this period?

It was unbelievably complicated because I always had to search for different channels of communication. A lot of people don’t have a fax machine anymore and then everything takes so terribly long.

Yet, as you write, even Google searches can unnecessarily draw out the time needed for work.

That’s right. There are studies that say that people who are distracted, say, by an incoming email, need an average of 25 minutes to get back to the work they were doing. Sometimes I had the feeling that I could easily do without the Internet, for example when working on a specific article. Knowing full well that I had no access to Google I had to know exactly who I would need to get in touch with before I began the work. In this way, I could get answers to questions with three phone calls that I otherwise would have needed to go online 30 times to clarify. For example, when I was doing research in Bethlehem on a Palestinian crime fiction writer and was desperately searching for the name of the famous female suicide bomber for my article that was everywhere on the posters – in the end I had to call the Goethe-Institut Ramallah.

What was the effect on your subjective sense of time?

The months were quite clearly more calmly timed – with less breathlessness, therefore more fulfilling. But I’m not talking about any mystic analogies; I wasn’t seated in the bosom of being. I was still the comical, neurotic guy that I am. So, no scenes of enlightenment.

Did you have “phantom pain” and feel your smart phone vibrating in your pocket even though it wasn’t there?

Phantom pain? No. I am only moderately addicted. I didn’t have any physical withdrawal symptoms. And since I wrote a book about it, I was practically the guinea pig and the scientist in one. When you observe yourself, you understand a good deal much better and don’t suffer so from the inside out.

And what findings did you, as the “scientist” reach?

The Internet is not evil. It’s just an incredibly big universe and I think we haven’t learned how to handle it yet. That is what my book is about. Why is it that we are so uncontrolled? In my view, it’s this hybrid of narcissism and the pressure of work fulfilment that drives our dependence on the web.

The interview was held by Anke Rönspies. It is the abridged version of a conversation that has been published in its full length on the website of the German-Chinese cultural network.