The Stranger in the Woods

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At 20, Chris Knight set off into the woods to avoid society. He didn't come out apart from to commit petty theft for supplies for 27 years, when he was finally caught after about 1,000 burglaries. Catherine and I are a bit divided on this story -- I think Chris clearly had something wrong in terms of mental health, whereas Catherine thinks he crossed a line when he committed theft to survive. Either way, I don't think you could claim that Chris was living in luxury in isolation, especially when research has shown that extended isolation is generally very bad for mental health. I came across this book because Digital Minimalism recommended it as a good exploration of solitude, but most of the book really isn't about that. Mostly the book is a description of Knight and his life for those 27 years. That said, it's still an interesting read. I'd avoid the book if talk of suicide is a trigger for you, although Knight does not appear to have carried through on his threat.

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Digital Minimalism

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This book argues that technology, especially social media, has been deliberately engineered by Silicon Valley to be addictive, and that often there are detrimental impacts to the products we all use every day. That argument makes sense in that these products are measured by the amount of time they are used per user (and thus the advertising revenue generated), and have evolutionary pressure to find ways to increase user minutes per day. There is also research cited in the book that anxiety levels in teenagers have increased in a manner which correlates with the release of the smart phone. Now, I don't think I could ever be a digital minimalist as described in the book, especially when work expects so much connectivity from me (it will be interesting if a right to switch off ever passes in Australia, put it that way), but I do think there are interesting ideas here. For example, asking why you have certain technology is probably reasonable. The low hanging fruit here seems to be smartphone apps for most people -- can you explain why you have all those apps installed? Especially when many of them are bad for your privacy? The bar proposed by…

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