Alexandra Samuel has a very nice piece in The Atlantic that uses the digital Sabbath urge– her treatment’s not as systematic as other recent pieces about the movement, but that suits her purpose– to make a great point: “Unplugging may feel like the most obvious way to access these experiences of intimacy and quiet in a noisy digital world, but the very fact that it’s so obvious should make us suspicious.” She continues:

It’s easier to imagine flipping the off switch than to engage with and work through the various human failings that the Internet has brought to the fore.

And it’s easier to avoid what is, to many, a very painful truth: Going offline is no longer a realistic option. Sure, we can unplug for an hour, a day, or even a week, but it’s not like you can permanently shut off the challenges of our online existence. The offline world is now utterly defined by networks, too, from the pace of our work to the flow of our money. You can look up from the screen, but there is no way to escape the digital.

What you can do is find those qualities of presence, focus, and even solitude in your networked existence. Call it the new unplugging: a way to step back from the rush and din of the Internet, and approach our time online with the same kind of intention and integrity we bring to our best offline interactions.

Not a bad description of the contemplative computing project, though my take is somewhat different, thanks to its drawing on the extended mind literature, and work on contemplative practices. Thank goodness I’m weeks away from finishing the book. It’s starting to get crowded around here….