on going offline

This NYT article “Your Brain on Computers”  came out on my last day of beach vacation, echoing everything I noticed about how my mind changed over two weeks with minimum internet…

• My attention span grew back, from about 10 seconds to several hours. I could read half a novel at a time, without the itch to look at something new. You know, that twitch of your left hand to open a new tab…
• My peripheral vision grew back, my field of focus going from a small, Mac Book shaped rectangle to the whole horizon. I remember thinking, this landscape has infinite detail, waaaay more than HD… Dumb, but true.
• I enjoyed ignoring incoming email for extended stretches of time.  
• In conversations, I lost the impulse to constantly look up relevant tangents online, or reference YouTube videos and blogs.
• Twitter now seems like an insufferable commotion.
• The best antidote to internet addiction is reading novels.