August Lamm's account of selling his laptop and embracing analog life is both inspiring and deeply troubling, not for what it reveals about his personal journey, but for what it inadvertently exposes about the myth of digital choice in modern society.
While I admire Lamm's commitment to reclaiming his attention and mental space, his experiment fundamentally misses a crucial point: he hasn't actually eliminated computer dependency, he's simply outsourced it. The weekly pilgrimages to the library basement, enduring "uncomfortable chairs" and
"sticky keyboards" to maintain his digital obligations, reveal the uncomfortable truth that even the most dedicated digital resistor cannot truly escape the web of technological dependency that defines contemporary life.
Lamm's experiment requires a level of privilege that renders it inaccessible to most people. As a freelance writer with flexible schedules and apparently sufficient income to absorb the "time tax" of analog living, he can afford the luxury of inconvenience. But consider the single mother working two jobs who needs instant access to her children's school communications, work schedules, and healthcare portals. Consider the elderly person managing multiple medications through online prescription services, or the small business owner whose livelihood depends on immediate responses to customer inquiries.
The reality is that institutional choices have made digital participation effectively mandatory. Banks close branches and push customers toward apps. Government services migrate online with minimal analog alternatives. Employers expect constant connectivity. Healthcare providers require digital portals for test results and appointment scheduling. These aren't lifestyle choices, they're systemic impositions that make Lamm's approach a form of performance art rather than a viable alternative for most people.
Living without a computer in modern society is increasingly like trying to live without electricity in a modern city. Sure, it's theoretically possible, you could use candles, ice blocks, and wood stoves, but the infrastructure assumes electrical participation. Traffic lights, elevators, payment systems, emergency services, and food safety all depend on electrical systems. Similarly, our social and economic infrastructure now assumes digital participation at such a fundamental level that opting out requires extraordinary effort and often means accepting exclusion from basic civic and economic life.
When Lamm describes his improved social life and better dates, he's describing the benefits available to someone who can afford to be digitally inconvenient. But many people's social connections depend on digital platforms precisely because geographic mobility, economic pressures, and changing work patterns have disrupted traditional community structures. The person working remote jobs to afford housing, the immigrant maintaining family connections across continents, or the mobility-limited individual whose primary social outlet is online communities, for them, digital disconnection means social isolation, not liberation.
Lamm frames his choice as "modelings another way," suggesting that individual resistance can inspire broader change. But there's a crucial difference between personal optimisation and systemic critique. His experiment doesn't challenge the institutional decisions that make digital participation mandatory, it simply demonstrates that one privileged individual can pay the increasingly high cost of opting out.
Real resistance would involve questioning why banks can eliminate human tellers, why government services can go digital-only, why employers can expect after-hours connectivity, and why basic civic participation increasingly requires smartphone ownership. It would mean advocating for analog alternatives to remain viable rather than accepting that digital convenience should trump human choice.
The most revealing aspect of Lamm's account is his admission that the library computers are unpleasant to use, "uncomfortable chairs," "sticky keyboards," and disruptive fellow patrons. This isn't an accident. Public digital access has been deliberately made inferior to private ownership, creating a two-tiered system where opting out of personal device ownership means accepting degraded access to essential services.
This design isn't neutral. It represents a systematic erosion of what we might call "digital public goods," well-maintained public terminals, staffed service desks, phone-based alternatives, and physical locations where people can access services without owning devices. When these alternatives are underfunded, uncomfortable, or eliminated entirely, "choice" becomes illusory.
Lamm's experiment succeeds as personal therapy but fails as social critique. His improved attention span and deeper relationships are real benefits worth celebrating. But framing this as a model for others obscures the broader issue: we've allowed essential services and social connections to become hostage to private technology ownership.
The question isn't whether individuals can heroically opt out of digital dependency; clearly some can, at considerable cost. The question is why we've structured society to make such heroism necessary. Why should accessing government services, maintaining employment, or staying connected with family require purchasing and maintaining expensive devices from private corporations?
True digital resistance wouldn't focus on individual purity but on systemic change. It would demand that banks maintain human service options, that government services remain accessible without smartphone ownership, that employers respect boundaries around personal device use, and that civic participation doesn't require technological literacy or device ownership.
It would recognise that for many people, digital tools genuinely solve problems, connecting isolated communities, enabling flexible work arrangements, providing access to information and services previously available only to the privileged few. The goal shouldn't be to eliminate these tools but to ensure they remain tools rather than becoming requirements.
Lamm's typewriter-and-library approach works for him, and that's genuinely wonderful. But scaling that solution would require rebuilding the very infrastructure of modern life … not impossible, but requiring collective action rather than individual sacrifice. Until we address the systemic forces that make digital participation mandatory, celebrating individual opt-outs risks obscuring the broader loss of choice that defines our technological moment.
The real challenge isn't learning to live without computers, it's learning to live with them on our own terms, in a society that preserves genuine alternatives and respects the right to be digitally inconvenient. It's a fight worth having, but it's not one that can be won from a typewriter alone.
https://www.thefp.com/p/could-you-live-without-a-computer
"As an anti-tech activist, I spend a lot of time telling people how to live without a smartphone. I gave mine up for a Nokia 2780 flip phone a few years ago. "Moderation is a myth," I say, and I mean it. You simply can't forge a balanced relationship with a device that's designed to be used constantly.
When I share this message online—in essays, podcast interviews, and workshops promoted on social media—I am often accused of hypocrisy. In one essay, I was accused of harnessing social media to make my "opposition to technology [my] brand;" apparently "the contradiction is so blatant it verges on self-parody."
The criticism hurt, but I held fast to the knowledge that switching to a dumbphone in 2022 had changed my life for the better, and that spreading my message—in real life, but also, yes, online—had helped strangers across the world. "You have played no small part in giving me my life back," one writer told me in an email. Still, there was one accusation that haunted me, because it rang true: Downgrading my phone was irrelevant if I was still addicted to my laptop.
When I first got rid of my smartphone, I still thought I could set boundaries around my laptop. I kept it at my art studio, and my evenings were gloriously offline. Then one day, I brought my laptop home to continue working on a short story. I did that the next day too, and every day after that. It wasn't too bad; I didn't have the Wi-Fi password for the apartment I shared with five roommates, so all I could do on my computer was write. Then, in a moment of weakness, I peeked at the bottom of the router and found the password.
I deleted the network that same day, only to log in again a few days later, then delete it again. But by then, I had already memorized the password, an ironically benevolent message devised by my ecstatic-dancing, somatic-healing roommate: Gr@ce&L0ve.
I made a new rule: My laptop stayed in the living room. Until it didn't. Somehow, it ended up under my bed. And then finally, after a yearlong battle, I started letting the laptop sleep beside my pillow, like a spoiled cat. My laptop became like a big smartphone. And despite its size, I would often pull it out of my bag on the sidewalk to connect to Starbucks Wi-Fi, just to see if any important emails had arrived during my stroll. "Someone's going to steal that," a passerby warned once, as I balanced my laptop on a public bike rack. "Let them," I thought.
Smartphone or no, I was constantly online. The longest I ever went without checking email was the eight hours I spent asleep—and even then, I would often have a look when I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I hated how tech-dependent I still was.
But everyone I knew had a computer, even the activists and flip phone users. Like most modern humans, particularly those who work freelance, I wasn't sure I could live without one.
At the start of this year, I traveled to Paris with another tech-critical writer. We took notes and conducted interviews for The Luddite Dispatch, a print-only newsletter with thousands of subscribers around the world. It was a rare privilege to spend time with someone equally fired up about screen addiction—which everyone seems to recognize as a problem, but no one seems willing to do anything about. We spent hours in cafés discussing our battle to save people from their digital devices. I was so inspired by these discussions that, during one, I pledged to live without a laptop. I would sell it just before moving to New York from London. That way, I could conduct an experiment in building an analog life from the ground up.
"I slid it across the counter," writes August Lamm. "The man looked it over, inspecting the underside and the vents, opening it up to check the display. He offered me 200 pounds."
The plan was potentially disastrous. I'm a freelance writer and artist. Throughout my 20s, I had found myself consistently in the lowest income bracket, netting zero in a good year, and taking out loans in a bad one. I typed and sent documents for a living, and pitched editors via email. I certainly wasn't established enough to start acting like a diva, demanding that people communicate with me only by snail mail. I couldn't force a whole industry to go analog just for me. So after I returned from Paris, I began to sketch out a detailed plan for balancing the demands of my work with the demands of my psyche, a set of guidelines that would grant me freedom without negatively impacting my career, finances, or relationships.
First, I downloaded all my files onto a hard drive—unfinished manuscripts, legal documents, and 60,000 photos. I bought a planner from an office supply store and copied down my calendar. I wrote out my friends' numbers, emails, and addresses in an alphabetized address book.
I planned to use a computer at the library once a week, in order to maintain contact with the digital world—and the editors, students, and collaborators of mine who inhabited it.
On March 24, I sent one last message to my contacts on WhatsApp and iMessage, applications that wouldn't be available at the library: "Hey, I'm selling my computer tomorrow so won't be able to check messages anymore. Take my phone number and email so we can stay in touch!"
I started fantasizing about the hours I would get back, the books I would read, the walks I would take, the idle evenings I would spend firmly rooted in the physical realm. I thought mostly about the reprieve from the ceaseless cycle of checks—email, messages, social media—that had dominated decades of my life. This was a cycle I entered when bored or lonely or sad or stuck. I hated checking, and I hated finding nothing. Most of all, I hated to think what this was doing to my brain.
There was a little kiosk outside the train station in my neighborhood in London, with rows of used smartphones behind glass, their screens dark, prices handwritten on scraps of paper. On March 25, I went there, unzipped my backpack and took out my MacBook, which I'd bought a decade earlier with $3,000 I'd saved up from illustration commissions.
"Someone's going to steal that," a passerby warned once, as I balanced my laptop on a public bike rack. "Let them," I thought.
It was hard to think of any wage-earning labor I'd done without that computer. Even the in-person drawing classes or talks I'd given had involved slideshows and handouts I'd made on my laptop, as well as emails and Zoom calls beforehand. I guessed I'd earned half a million dollars on my computer over 10 years.
Still, I slid it across the counter. The brushed metal was pristine, the shiny Apple logo as unmarked as the day I bought it. The man looked it over, inspecting the underside and the vents, opening it up to check the display. He offered me 200 pounds.
I wondered if I could make more on eBay, Craigslist, or a buyback site. Would Apple accept it for refurbishment? Was my computer in "great" or "fair" cosmetic condition? How many battery cycles had it accumulated over the years? Had I paid for any special features—extra RAM, a superior graphics card? Was there another kiosk down the street?
As I stood there on the sidewalk, there was no way to look it up. I had to take the guy's word for it.
I am writing this essay in New York, on a typewriter purchased from Gramercy Typewriter Co., a beloved institution nearly a century old, which has somehow hung on through the digital age. Once I finish this draft, I will make edits in red pen, then go to the public library to type it up and email it to my editor. It is 7 a.m. and sunlight is making its way down the building across the street.
I have lived without a computer for over two months now, and it is everything I thought it would be. I no longer feel distracted, manipulated, ranked—forcibly wrenched out of finite reality and thrust into the infinite realm of the internet. These days, my real life is all I have, and it's more than enough.
Looking back at my lengthy preparations for the switch, I see now how anxious I was. It turns out that I had nothing to fear. My social life is more active than ever. I feel wide open to the world, and I meet new people everywhere—at concerts, on train platforms—all of whom are happy to communicate via text. Friends tell me about events the old-fashioned way, person to person, and I do the same. I've also had my fair share of meet-cutes, and am going on better dates than I ever had through the apps. In my free time, I don't feel alone, or not nearly as alone as I did in the shadow of the internet. My apartment is a closed ecosystem, a chamber of presence. It has everything I need. On quiet evenings, I read books, write postcards, and practice guitar. I am where I am
"Now email happens in a basement room in the public library," writes August Lamm. "The chairs are uncomfortable, the keyboards are sticky, and I suffer threats, outbursts, and odors from my fellow patrons."
I still can't go completely offline. Very few people can. Our lives have become too entangled with the internet to simply abandon it, at least not overnight. I still pay bills online, and also book travel, order obscure books, search local businesses, and buy tickets to shows. Email is still how I communicate with agents, editors, and peers. But now email happens in a basement room in the public library. The chairs are uncomfortable, the keyboards are sticky, and I suffer threats, outbursts, and odors from my fellow patrons. I dread my computer days, which is exactly the point.
As much as we might appreciate our smartphones and our computers, I doubt that any of us wants a world in which they are mandatory. Over years of unconscious adoption of the latest upgrades, we have passively surrendered our right to downgrade. Analog living is increasingly out of reach for the average person, who uses apps to pay for parking, to read a menu, or to communicate with doctors or childcare professionals. I see it as a duty to model that there is another way, that we can abandon our devices while maintaining our connections.
It turns out that despite the analog hassle it takes to replace digital convenience, I have more free time than ever before. And more importantly, I'm happier.
When I sold my computer, I expected to feel sentimental. Here was the object I'd used to write three books and one anti-tech pamphlet, to communicate with everyone I knew, to seek out apartments and lovers, to have one last call with my father before he died. But I could do all those things without a computer, too. Of course it would be more convoluted, requiring endless trips to the library, long nights at the typewriter, rolls of stamps, and belated apologies. ("Sorry I missed your email, I was offline over the weekend!") I have accepted the time tax I would pay for my mental freedom. It turns out that despite the analog hassle it takes to replace digital convenience, I have more free time than ever before. And more importantly, I'm happier.
I handed my laptop over, giving it one last look before it disappeared into a back room. There was nothing distinct about its appearance: just a silver rectangle in the hands of a stranger. The object, like the hours it stole, I no longer recognized as my own."