It's been two months of no home internet for me (#1013788), and today I decided to re-install it.

The experiment was fun, the calmness that comes from being less "aware" of the world in the evenings continued all through the experiment, but being unable to spontaneously look something up is what ultimately caused me to turn my internet back on. New ideas happen on their own schedule, and if you don't capitalize on them in the moment, you might not get them back. For me, the internet helps me poke holes in new ideas quickly to see if they're worth pursuing.

This time around I do have a new internet provider (a small startup it looks like), and they actually have some interesting controls like being able to shut off your home internet automatically around a pre-set time like dinner and bedtime.

It also costs half the price of my previous plan (albeit at a lower, but fast enough speed), so that's a plus too. I'm not sure if I'd recommend turning your home internet off, but the first week or so is really peaceful.

You might get lucky and experience the same level of unawareness of the online world in an extended power outage, but otherwise it's hard to compare the feeling of being so offline while still being so close to the outside world. For me, life felt half like backcountry camping, and half like living a normal city life.