More tech support for:

Self

Technology can distract us from the path to happiness and self-realization, or it can help us get there. This page offers reflections, resources and advice on how to turn the web into an engine of self-discovery, creative expression and mental health. It also offers cautionary tales about some of the struggles and excesses that come along with integrating technology into our personal and professional lives. If you’re trying to figure out how to integrate technology into your life with integrity and purpose, I hope the resources here will help.

Alone online

When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense [...]

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The size of social media

No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. That’s the core of Mashable’s advice in a piece running today, How to respond when social media [...]

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2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

Unplugging is not the only way to take control of your relationship to the Internet. If you want to create a more meaningful life and a healthier world, there are ways to pursue that online as well as offline. But you need to find tools that are more nuanced than the off switch. If you’re [...]

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At Harvard Business Review

10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life

#thankyoujesus for irl and online friends. Couldn’t live w/o either. Laptop down. It’s IRL Face Time! it was so cool…

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5 ways to make your time online more fulfilling

“I don’t understand how you can spend so much time online. Most of what I see online sickens me.” “Like what?” “Oh you know…porn. Spam. Stupid Facebook quizzes. Endless advertising.” I couldn’t help smiling as this conversation unfolded at the café table next to mine. It’s a conversation I’ve heard all-too-often: less-wired friends condemning the [...]

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7 practices to strengthen your online presence

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Buddhists make great friends. They’re fantastic listeners, they’re thoughtfully engaged with the world around them, and if they’re the real deal, it’s calming just to be around them. But when I wrote the HBR piece about the 10 reasons to stop apologizing for your online life, there was one line that made me afraid to [...]

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5 paths to self-discovery online

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A few years ago I attended a conference where I’d done my homework, Googling the people I was most excited to meet. So when I was introduced to G., I had my opening line all ready: “It’s great to meet you! There aren’t many government officials who manage to launch a successful screenwriting career, too.” [...]

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5 ways to get authentically naked

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Sarah Wilson has busted me. In her blog post about the meaning of authenticity in an age of over-disclosure, she asks: Blurting stuff out, warts and all, can certainly look and smell and feel real. But it’s often a seductive guise for the truth. We can carefully select what we wish to over-share, and then [...]

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Social media vs reality

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about how the Internet is impoverishing our minds, souls and relationships. But Matthew Gallion has written what may now be my favorite articulation of why we should worry about the web in his post on Social Media and the Real: In my own estimation, while I do have [...]

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Research reveals people can survive up to 24 hours without Internet access

I’m fascinated by the number of people who are experimenting with different forms of unplugging: journalists, bloggers and tweeters who take some kind of solo holiday from connectivity. But a recent study at the University of Maryland took a larger-scale approach, asking 200 students to go offline for 24 hours. The top 5 findings of [...]

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An evangelical perspective on information overload

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I was fascinated to come across an evangelical take on the problem of information overload. Becky Sweat’s article in The Good News reads: information overload can distract us from the most important priority in our lives—our relationship with God. Indeed, a healthy relationship with other people, especially our family and fellow Christians, is an important [...]

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