A tangled web of gadgets. Photo: Peter Kaminski / Flickr

In my last couple of blog posts, I waxed poetic about the life of a digital nomad. As a counterpoint, here's a fine article that appeared in the Orange-County Register: Digital detox for a trip to Italy. Gary Warner, the newspaper's travel editor, decided to cut off the electronic umbilical cord for an entire vacation. With today's gadgets and social networks, many of us have become used to (addicted to?) instant feedback from our friends. Going cold turkey can be tough.

Warner is no Luddite and tech-basher. He does acknowledge how technology can enrich travel and make it more convenient. However, he does point out a big danger: technology can bring home on the trip with you, with all its attendant baggage and stress. In his words:

I found the computer and phone gave me an agitated feeling. My body might be on the road, but my head was at my desk thousands of miles away. Even GPS had stripped away the serendipity of getting wonderfully lost. Did I really need–did I really want–the "least time" route from Skye to Inverness?

Warner's observations are similar to the ethos our own Rolf Potts trumpeted in his book Vagabonding.  An over-reliance on things like the Internet might blind us to the exotic locale we came all this long way to discover.

Here are some things I do to moderate my dose of technology:

–Get online early in the morning.  People are asleep, businesses are closed, so you're not missing out on anything.  If you check e-mail sometime later in the day or evening, you risk losing your chance to join some cool people for a meal or a fun night out.

–Read, but don't reply.  I've easily wasted hours by writing blow-by-blow accounts in e-mails to friends.  Unless it's really urgent, it's better to postpone replying to every message you get.

–Don't get caught up in documenting every aspect of your trip.  With blogging and social networks, it's easy to get sidetracked by "recording" your travels with photos, video, and text updates.  Rather than living our travels.  This is why I always write posts on my travel blog after I've returned from a place, not while I'm there. While I do keep a travel journal, I strictly write bullet-point lists of key events and details, not full-length stories.  I save that heavy-duty writing for my blog.  Your record-keeping style may vary, though.

Have you ever been cut off from the Internet for an extended length of time?  Were you excited to get online and see all the messages from your friends?  But have you ever been disappointed by what was in your inbox?  Warner sure was:

Of course, I re-toxed as soon as I got home. Though it was past midnight when we finally came in the door from the airport, I pulled my devices from the drawer and fired them up.  More than 1,200 emails, more than 1,000 tweets from feeds . . . When I scrolled and clicked through it all, I found I had missed absolutely nothing that mattered.

In a way, this reinforces that we can live without technology.  Warner's home life didn't collapse while he was unplugged.  For more, please check out Rolf Potts' interview with Gary Warner.

Have you met people who couldn't seem to get offline?  How do you keep from over-using technology?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.