{"id":1540,"date":"2012-03-02T08:56:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T08:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2012\/03\/02\/sean-carey-34\/"},"modified":"2019-11-17T22:19:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T18:19:31","slug":"sean-carey-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/sean-carey-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital detox holidays \u2013 How The Network Society Just Got Smaller"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sean Carey<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you have a good rest,\u201d I said to a friend, who works as an administrator at London University, a few days before her departure for a week\u2019s holiday in Portugal last summer. She had been working hard on a project using an online survey to monitor the health and welfare of undergraduate students.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo do I,\u201d she replied. \u201cBut I\u2019ll do bit of work while I\u2019m at the hotel as the project needs to be finished on time.\u201d She paused and added: \u201cI\u2019m taking my laptop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was horrified on two counts. First, I could see that my friend was not going to get the peace and quiet she so obviously needed. Secondly, she was contributing to the steady erosion of the concept of \u201ctaking a holiday.\u201d Put simply, an electronic form of communication \u2013 the Internet — was infiltrating and squeezing the life out of a traditional and highly valued leisure form.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most social scientists agree that the post-industrial world is significantly different from anything that has gone before it. The big questions are: how different, and in what ways? Spanish sociologist and urbanist Manuel Castells, for example, thinks that the move towards information processing \u2013 economic activity based on the manipulation of signs, symbols, metaphors and metonyms in the service sector \u2013 is in many ways equivalent to the jump from an agrarian mode of production to the industrial one in 18th and 19th century Europe and North America.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Castells refers to the type of economic activity on display in the advanced economies as the \u201cinformational mode of production.\u201d Unlike some of his colleagues, however, he prefers the term \u201cNetwork Society\u201d to \u201cInformation Society\u201d or \u201cPost-industrial Society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why? Well, Castells reckons that the concept of Network Society captures the reality of the way the modern world is increasingly organised around \u201celectronically processed information networks,\u201d where individuals are connected to one another in novel and innovative ways. He thinks (and recommends) that citizens now have the capacity to challenge the power of the state as well as the inequalities generated by global capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever label you choose, it is clear that electronic communications are changing the way people perceive and experience time \u2013 and not always for the better. As Oslo-based social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen\u00a0 pointed out in his 2001 book Tyranny of the Moment<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe last couple of decades have witnessed a formidable growth of various time-saving technologies, ranging from advanced multi-level time managers to e-mail, voice mail, mobile telephones and word processors; and yet millions of us have never had so little time to spare as now. It may seem as if we are unwittingly being enslaved by the very technology that promised liberation.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Even though the Network Society continues to inexorably spread its tentacles\u00a0 transforming and sometimes revolutionizing methods of production and social relationships around\u00a0 the globe, a fight back is going on — at least in some\u00a0 high-end cultural spaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

I read one example of such resistance in a brilliant article \u2018The Joy of Quiet\u2019 written in 2011 by essayist and travel writer Pico Iyer for the New York Times<\/em>. He observed that visitors were prepared to pay\u00a0 $2285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, California and not have a TV.\u00a0 Iyer concluded that the future of travel \u201clies in \u2018black-hole resorts,\u2019 which charge high prices because you can\u2019t get online in their rooms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He continued in a way that echoes Eriksen\u2019s analysis:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn barely one generation we\u2019ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them \u2014 often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The concept of black-hole holiday resorts is gaining momentum. Many travellers, including\u00a0 members of the digital creative elite, are\u00a0 desperate to find peace and quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the hyperactive Danah Boyd, a new media expert at Microsoft and assistant professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, suggests that many people need an \u201ce-mail sabbatical\u201d. The reason? \u201cCuz the interface is designed to put you on a hamster wheel, rarely ever succeeding at letting you reach empty. You feel accomplished when you get to inbox zero,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then you sleep and it’s all back to haunt you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The travel industry is \u201conly just waking up to the technology backlash,\u201d according to Jonathan Brown writing in The Independent<\/em>. Nevertheless, some of late capitalism\u2019s marketers have been quick out of the blocks and a few black-hole resorts are already servicing members of the world\u2019s geographically diverse economically privileged groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, in the previously unpopulated island of Kunfunadhoo in the Maldives, no phones or televisions are allowed. Holidaymakers enthusiastically fill the time by indulging in pre-digital age activities like swimming, tennis, and water-skiing.<\/span><\/p>\n

St. Vincent and Grenadines Tourism Authority further ratcheted up the profile of the black-hole segment of its visitor economy by launching the world\u2019s first branded \u201cdigital detox\u201d holiday with the tagline \u201cThe Ultimate Guide to Switching Off.\u201d The accompanying online brochure spells it out:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA de-tech is like a health detox but for your mind\u2026 It means unplugging the world, turning of all the distracting devices that battle for your attention in our modern world and living in the here and now\u2026 in a chain of unspoilt islands set within the beguiling blues of the Caribbean Sea\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The irony is that this marketing information is only available electronically. We use the Internet to escape the Internet, in other words. A price worth paying?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tricky one to answer. But I must tell my friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Sean Carey is visiting lecturer in the Business School, University of Roehampton<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A version of this article has also appeared at anthropologyworks<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 2 March 2012<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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