I want to use computers without being exposed to the internet. I haven’t been able to find a lot of practical information about this. I would appreciate the LessWrong hivemind’s thoughts on this matter.
My current plan is something like have no internet access at home, record internet tasks on a todo list, go to a library once per week and do them (sample tasks include downloading fanfic reading material for the week, sending e-mails, downloading new versions of programs, checking my bank accounts, etc...). Lack of torrents is something I’ll just have to live with. I’m also thinking of switching my phone to a Nokia 106, which has no internet access. There’s a neat trick where you can get e-mails as text messages, which should be enough to deal with emergencies. I’ll make sure to avoid careers which involve prolonged interaction with internet-capable machines, such as programming. Is teaching math safe?
I dread the day when wireless internet becomes omnipresent. It’s a horrible, horrible supertimulus.
If you want to have absolutely no exposure to the iternet, this should be easy to accomplish by sabotaging the tools your computer uses to access the internet. If you’re on Ubuntu, you can do this easily by going into /sbin and removing dhclient, and possibly if and iw. To get those back you’d need a liveCD, and to get a liveCD you’d need an internet connection.
I used that solution for a couple months and it worked well. But I often do have legitimate uses for the internet. So you could use something like LeechBlock to block unproductive websites but retain internet access. Unfortunately, LeechBlock and similar solutions are easy to circumvent.
So I built a system to flexibly manage internet access restrictions in a way that is very difficult to circumvent. The code is here, but it’s hard to use without a tutorial, and I haven’t written a tutorial yet—I’m planning to, but it might take me another month or two. Essentially, you have two user accounts on your computer. The one is a “controller” administrator account, while the other is a “requester” non-administrator account. Most of the time, you are in the requester account, and you do not have access to the controller account; the controller account’s password is randomized and hidden from you by the system. You can issue requests to the controller account; an example of a request is “give me access to the controller account”. These requests take some time to be enacted, which prevents precommitment-breaking. The controller account restricts the requester account’s internet use by filtering packets and blocking certain domains. Again, this code will be hard to use until I write a tutorial/readme, which I’ll probably do in a month or two.
Currently, my plan is to not get internet at home, and to rely on public places such as libraries/Starbux/etc whenever necessary.
I don’t currently have a Smartphone, but am pretty convinced that there are way too many advantages to having an iPhone as a blind introvert to avoid one forever (Android accessibility is too weak to rely upon at present). I am worried about how to make this work without having the constant temptation of 24⁄7 internet access hanging over my head (I don’t really know how any of the data plans work / what extremely useful apps require an internet connection / etc).
(I also don’t know if any of my neighbors would have unsecured wi-fi, or if the signal would be strong enough to access from home. At my parents’ house, the wi-fi from across the street is strong enough and unsecure enough that my laptop connects automatically if nothing else is available.)
Most teaching jobs around here involve significant use of internet capable machines for grading, communication with other teachers and administration, and increasingly communication with students. Mathematics is probably more resistant to online teaching materials than most subjects though, and you may be able to find a school that eschews such things.
Can you unpack this goal a little for me? Is your desire to constrain your future self from some activities, or something more subtle? Is this an exploration of a possiblity to see what effect it’ll have, or a plan to solve a specific problem that you’ve identified?
Your last few sentences makes me think this is more like performance art than any rational goal-driven decision. If you’re planning to arrange your life around this, I suspect you simply can’t live in an urban setting. Teaching math isn’t safe, you will be surrounded by people who don’t share your phobia. Farmhand may or may not be safe.
This is the next step in a series of escalating steps I have taken to try to fix a worsening problem. I understand that from your perspective this probably looks like a very drastic action taken for no adequately explained reason, but I think of it as a very proportionate response adopted after lesser options have been exhausted.
As for my goal… let’s just say I find this passage very familiar, except instead of “day” it’s “days”, or perhaps “weeks”:
Opening Safari is an actively destructive decision. I am asking that consciousness be taken away from me. Like the lost time between leaving a party drunk and materializing somehow at your front door, the internet robs you of a day you can visit recursively or even remember.
Could you elaborate on why you think teaching math in a city might not be safe but being a farmhand in the country might be? If every city starts installing open WiFi networks you might be right, but right now it seems to me that creating an internet-less place at home should be enough (I’m glad routers are now coming locked by default, with long-ass alphanumeric passwords).
Simple part first: yes, I claim that every city has or will soon have near-ubiquitous internet access. If you need to deny your future self the ability to choose to use the internet easily, you won’t be able to live in a city. Further, surrounding yourself with internet users is going to prove much harder to resist than surrounding yourself with a non-technical, somewhat isolated community.
Harder part: I don’t know what you’ve tried already (and specifically: get professional psychological assistance, which often requires that you try multiple providers until you find one you trust). This level of avoidance (where you’re considering careers based on availability) seems way more than you should undertake via self-diagnosis only.
Simple part first: yes, I claim that every city has or will soon have near-ubiquitous internet access. If you need to deny your future self the ability to choose to use the internet easily, you won’t be able to live in a city.
One doesn’t follow from the other.
Take out any built-in wifi hardware; get a usb wireless module. These are tiny enough that you can employ almost any security/inconvenience measure on them. Decide which security/inconvenience measures are appropriate. Done.
I suspect I’m taking jaime2000′s situation a little more seriously than perhaps I should. If one is considering rearranging one’s life around this for many years, that’s not a matter of a little inconvenience or simple “prevent devices I own/carry from internetting”. It’s a matter of “don’t associate with people who aren’t supportive, and deny myself access to kiosks, public wifi, borrowed tablets, etc.”
If your concern is that you’ll end up on the street offering sexual favors for a glance a wikipedia, having a net nanny on your computer at home isn’t sufficient.
Now, it may not be that it’s a harmful serious addiction that he or she is facing, and the original post was overstated. Identifying the underlying problem is necessary before suggesting technological band-aids.
Simple part first: yes, I claim that every city has or will soon have near-ubiquitous internet access. If you need to deny your future self the ability to choose to use the internet easily, you won’t be able to live in a city. Further, surrounding yourself with internet users is going to prove much harder to resist than surrounding yourself with a non-technical, somewhat isolated community.
Like I said, I fear for the future. There are some ideas which would help even in a future full of free Wi-Fi connections (I’ve been toying with the idea of buying an 5th generation iMac, which was the last model of iMacs not to include a built-in WiFi antenna, and installing Windows on it; or I could just pay some IT dude to physically rip the internal antenna from a new laptop machine), but if it reaches the point of a free internet terminal in every room or something like that, then yes, I may well have to flee first world cities. That said, we aren’t there yet, so I might as well take advantage of cities while I can.
Harder part: I don’t know what you’ve tried already (and specifically: get professional psychological assistance, which often requires that you try multiple providers until you find one you trust). This level of avoidance (where you’re considering careers based on availability) seems way more than you should undertake via self-diagnosis only.
I find the idea that I am supposed to consult with a “professional” before making drastic changes to my life a little creepy. However, if this doesn’t work, I will seriously start to consider the use of psychiatric medication, which will necessitate talking to a shrink.
I find the idea that I am supposed to consult with a “professional” before making drastic changes to my life a little creepy.
Yeah, it is a bit creepy. For some types of changes (those that are related to common, diagnosable behavioral problems), it can still be incredibly valuable.
I’ve used Internet Lock effectively in the past. Presumably there’s some way around it but it sounds like you’re like me and don’t know enough to find out what that way is.
Currently I do use internet, but with severe filtering restrictions using both K9 and Microsoft Family Safety. So for example, I couldn’t follow the link you provided to explain your goals, because K9 blocked it. My wife has the password to both programs, which she makes sure I don’t find out. She also carefully monitors what I do online (at my request—plus I told her what types of things to call me out on) using SpectorPro. So yes, that means she’ll see what I’m writing now—hi dear! Obviously this wouldn’t work without a good partner.
I don’t have a smartphone, and neither does my wife. I’m a student, so perhaps that doesn’t count, but my wife’s a database / software consultant, and she gets along just fine without one. Again, that’s not getting rid of the internet, just the smartphone.
I know several people who don’t have internet access in their homes, and several who don’t even have computers. They work in positions where they don’t need to take computer-related work home with them, so any computer / internet use they have is at work. By the way, that’s the most effective way to do it—just ditch the computer entirely if at all possible. If it wasn’t for the fact that I need it for studying I’d do it myself.
I have no talent for hardware modification, so I’d either have to find some way to get good at it or pay someone to do it for me. That said, I have also considered this (removing Wi-Fi antennas before purchase was one of the few practical suggestions I found while trying to read up on this topic). Right now it seems like my current plan is easier, but I am certainly willing to experiment with many variations on the basic theme if my initial approach doesn’t work.
Buy the cheapest one you can find for the internet connection, and put it in an inconvenient position, for example where you have to stand while using it. After downloading everything you had on the list, always shut it down, to create a trivial inconvenience for starting it again.
Paul Graham tried something similar. It didn’t work very well. My previous experiences with creating trivial inconveniences have also been far from encouraging.
I want to use computers without being exposed to the internet. I haven’t been able to find a lot of practical information about this. I would appreciate the LessWrong hivemind’s thoughts on this matter.
My current plan is something like have no internet access at home, record internet tasks on a todo list, go to a library once per week and do them (sample tasks include downloading fanfic reading material for the week, sending e-mails, downloading new versions of programs, checking my bank accounts, etc...). Lack of torrents is something I’ll just have to live with. I’m also thinking of switching my phone to a Nokia 106, which has no internet access. There’s a neat trick where you can get e-mails as text messages, which should be enough to deal with emergencies. I’ll make sure to avoid careers which involve prolonged interaction with internet-capable machines, such as programming. Is teaching math safe?
I dread the day when wireless internet becomes omnipresent. It’s a horrible, horrible supertimulus.
If you want to have absolutely no exposure to the iternet, this should be easy to accomplish by sabotaging the tools your computer uses to access the internet. If you’re on Ubuntu, you can do this easily by going into /sbin and removing dhclient, and possibly if and iw. To get those back you’d need a liveCD, and to get a liveCD you’d need an internet connection.
I used that solution for a couple months and it worked well. But I often do have legitimate uses for the internet. So you could use something like LeechBlock to block unproductive websites but retain internet access. Unfortunately, LeechBlock and similar solutions are easy to circumvent.
So I built a system to flexibly manage internet access restrictions in a way that is very difficult to circumvent. The code is here, but it’s hard to use without a tutorial, and I haven’t written a tutorial yet—I’m planning to, but it might take me another month or two. Essentially, you have two user accounts on your computer. The one is a “controller” administrator account, while the other is a “requester” non-administrator account. Most of the time, you are in the requester account, and you do not have access to the controller account; the controller account’s password is randomized and hidden from you by the system. You can issue requests to the controller account; an example of a request is “give me access to the controller account”. These requests take some time to be enacted, which prevents precommitment-breaking. The controller account restricts the requester account’s internet use by filtering packets and blocking certain domains. Again, this code will be hard to use until I write a tutorial/readme, which I’ll probably do in a month or two.
Seconded!
Currently, my plan is to not get internet at home, and to rely on public places such as libraries/Starbux/etc whenever necessary.
I don’t currently have a Smartphone, but am pretty convinced that there are way too many advantages to having an iPhone as a blind introvert to avoid one forever (Android accessibility is too weak to rely upon at present). I am worried about how to make this work without having the constant temptation of 24⁄7 internet access hanging over my head (I don’t really know how any of the data plans work / what extremely useful apps require an internet connection / etc).
(I also don’t know if any of my neighbors would have unsecured wi-fi, or if the signal would be strong enough to access from home. At my parents’ house, the wi-fi from across the street is strong enough and unsecure enough that my laptop connects automatically if nothing else is available.)
Most teaching jobs around here involve significant use of internet capable machines for grading, communication with other teachers and administration, and increasingly communication with students. Mathematics is probably more resistant to online teaching materials than most subjects though, and you may be able to find a school that eschews such things.
Can you unpack this goal a little for me? Is your desire to constrain your future self from some activities, or something more subtle? Is this an exploration of a possiblity to see what effect it’ll have, or a plan to solve a specific problem that you’ve identified?
Your last few sentences makes me think this is more like performance art than any rational goal-driven decision. If you’re planning to arrange your life around this, I suspect you simply can’t live in an urban setting. Teaching math isn’t safe, you will be surrounded by people who don’t share your phobia. Farmhand may or may not be safe.
This is the next step in a series of escalating steps I have taken to try to fix a worsening problem. I understand that from your perspective this probably looks like a very drastic action taken for no adequately explained reason, but I think of it as a very proportionate response adopted after lesser options have been exhausted.
As for my goal… let’s just say I find this passage very familiar, except instead of “day” it’s “days”, or perhaps “weeks”:
Could you elaborate on why you think teaching math in a city might not be safe but being a farmhand in the country might be? If every city starts installing open WiFi networks you might be right, but right now it seems to me that creating an internet-less place at home should be enough (I’m glad routers are now coming locked by default, with long-ass alphanumeric passwords).
Simple part first: yes, I claim that every city has or will soon have near-ubiquitous internet access. If you need to deny your future self the ability to choose to use the internet easily, you won’t be able to live in a city. Further, surrounding yourself with internet users is going to prove much harder to resist than surrounding yourself with a non-technical, somewhat isolated community.
Harder part: I don’t know what you’ve tried already (and specifically: get professional psychological assistance, which often requires that you try multiple providers until you find one you trust). This level of avoidance (where you’re considering careers based on availability) seems way more than you should undertake via self-diagnosis only.
One doesn’t follow from the other.
Take out any built-in wifi hardware; get a usb wireless module. These are tiny enough that you can employ almost any security/inconvenience measure on them. Decide which security/inconvenience measures are appropriate. Done.
I suspect I’m taking jaime2000′s situation a little more seriously than perhaps I should. If one is considering rearranging one’s life around this for many years, that’s not a matter of a little inconvenience or simple “prevent devices I own/carry from internetting”. It’s a matter of “don’t associate with people who aren’t supportive, and deny myself access to kiosks, public wifi, borrowed tablets, etc.”
If your concern is that you’ll end up on the street offering sexual favors for a glance a wikipedia, having a net nanny on your computer at home isn’t sufficient.
Now, it may not be that it’s a harmful serious addiction that he or she is facing, and the original post was overstated. Identifying the underlying problem is necessary before suggesting technological band-aids.
Like I said, I fear for the future. There are some ideas which would help even in a future full of free Wi-Fi connections (I’ve been toying with the idea of buying an 5th generation iMac, which was the last model of iMacs not to include a built-in WiFi antenna, and installing Windows on it; or I could just pay some IT dude to physically rip the internal antenna from a new laptop machine), but if it reaches the point of a free internet terminal in every room or something like that, then yes, I may well have to flee first world cities. That said, we aren’t there yet, so I might as well take advantage of cities while I can.
I find the idea that I am supposed to consult with a “professional” before making drastic changes to my life a little creepy. However, if this doesn’t work, I will seriously start to consider the use of psychiatric medication, which will necessitate talking to a shrink.
Yeah, it is a bit creepy. For some types of changes (those that are related to common, diagnosable behavioral problems), it can still be incredibly valuable.
I’ve used Internet Lock effectively in the past. Presumably there’s some way around it but it sounds like you’re like me and don’t know enough to find out what that way is.
Currently I do use internet, but with severe filtering restrictions using both K9 and Microsoft Family Safety. So for example, I couldn’t follow the link you provided to explain your goals, because K9 blocked it. My wife has the password to both programs, which she makes sure I don’t find out. She also carefully monitors what I do online (at my request—plus I told her what types of things to call me out on) using SpectorPro. So yes, that means she’ll see what I’m writing now—hi dear! Obviously this wouldn’t work without a good partner.
I don’t have a smartphone, and neither does my wife. I’m a student, so perhaps that doesn’t count, but my wife’s a database / software consultant, and she gets along just fine without one. Again, that’s not getting rid of the internet, just the smartphone.
I know several people who don’t have internet access in their homes, and several who don’t even have computers. They work in positions where they don’t need to take computer-related work home with them, so any computer / internet use they have is at work. By the way, that’s the most effective way to do it—just ditch the computer entirely if at all possible. If it wasn’t for the fact that I need it for studying I’d do it myself.
Why is this a problem? Drip some epoxy into your physical Ethernet port, break off the Wi-Fi antenna, delete the network drivers from your system...
I have no talent for hardware modification, so I’d either have to find some way to get good at it or pay someone to do it for me. That said, I have also considered this (removing Wi-Fi antennas before purchase was one of the few practical suggestions I found while trying to read up on this topic). Right now it seems like my current plan is easier, but I am certainly willing to experiment with many variations on the basic theme if my initial approach doesn’t work.
You only need to break things. Breaking stuff is much easier than general-purpose hardware modification :-)
Deleting the network drivers, though, is a filesystem operation and will cut off your machine from the ’net quite effectively.
How about using two computers?
Buy the cheapest one you can find for the internet connection, and put it in an inconvenient position, for example where you have to stand while using it. After downloading everything you had on the list, always shut it down, to create a trivial inconvenience for starting it again.
Paul Graham tried something similar. It didn’t work very well. My previous experiences with creating trivial inconveniences have also been far from encouraging.
More significant inconveniences, then? Paul didn’t make his computer really physically awkward to use as Viliam suggested.