Going tech-free

I maintained a pencil and paper record of my tech-free journey, in trying to keep with the spirit of the tech-free idea. However, even using a pencil and paper, as I noted, is using technology since to a caveman with a sharp stick, an Amish man with a steel plow is highly technological indeed. My journey began at 11 AM since I even forgot to do the "tech-free" thing until that point, which I think is illustrative in itself. The deeply ingrained way that technology infiltrates our lives invites comparison to the involuntary beating of our hearts. The coffee maker, the stove, the refrigerator that keeps the eggs cold, the radio that pumps tunes to fight off the silence. All are ways that we use technology in a deeply taken-for-granted, almost even entitled sense. We are modern people and this is our manner of life, the air we breathe, our birthright.
My own day went quite well without technology since I had planned for it effectively. I did the tech-free day on Sunday and I had tackled much of the online and technical work I needed to do for work and school ahead of time. Still, since I am teaching two online classes right now, I needed to check my email and Blackboard shells briefly to answer questions and put out any fires of the day. Also, with my wife at home with our five children, all 8 and under, I needed to call and video chat with them a couple times during the day. Children don't understand "tech-free" days. Neither do wives, for that matter. Still, mostly I read during the day and did a good bit of cooking, which set me up nicely for the week. I planned a nice evening hike and had a great time doing that. In actuality, my wife and I are somewhat used to this way of doing things, minus the phones, which we use to stay in contact with each other regularly. We spend our summers on Washington Island, Wisconsin, where we have a house. However, we do not have Internet there, no cable, no television for that matter, and only spotty cell phone reception. We love the down time there with our kids, playing games, hiking, riding bikes, reading, going to the beach, visiting friends and cousins. This mode of life is deeply ingrained in us with our respective family histories. We are suspicious of and sometimes even hostile toward technology as a matter of course. We try to limit its role in our lives by encouraging reading, games, outside activity, work, conversation, and adventure. We do not have cable at home, though we have Internet. It's hard to escape the clutches of technology completely due to our careers.
As far as impacts from this experience, I think it just reinforces our already strong commitment to self-consciously consider technology's role in our individual and family life. My wife and I dwell on this topic and she greatly supports an even more limited use of technology than we already have (though she did not like not having phone contact with me for the day since we are a distance away from each other). For instance, I have been thinking about how that I often read my Kindle around the children, but it is hard for them to tell if I am reading or playing a game. I might need to read more print books around them so they can quickly see that I am reading a book. As always, you get what you model, so our own attachment to and use of technology needs to reflect what we want to see, which is a strong engagement with people rather than devices, with reading rather than playing games, with ideas rather than an uncritical use of technology.