Emily Gertenbach

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Digital garden

Living a Lower-Tech Life

“Living a lower-tech life” might sound rich coming from me, a person who works on the internet all day long. But the truth is, I’m the sort of person who gets very easily overwhelmed by notification pings and dings, screen use exacerbates my dry eye and migraines, and spending too much time scrolling makes me feel bad inside and out.

If I’m perfectly honest, I ... kind of think the internet might have been a bad idea.

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At any rate, though, here we are: the world is on the internet, my job is on the internet (I try very hard to only put useful things online and not make the internet worse!) and barring some wild solar flares I don’t see that changing.

So I’m trying to disconnect, outside of work, and live a lower-tech life again. This doesn’t mean no tech, and as you’ll see, I actually bought some tech in order to make this happen. But the tech I bought was actually less high tech than one would expect for 2024. Most of it was secondhand, and some of it was downright old (for consumer devices).

The best way to describe it, probably, is living a less internet-connected life.

A little bit about me: I did experience life before the internet; I have indeed used a card catalog and microfiche. So what I detail below isn’t nostalgia for a time I never knew (though that’s okay and understandable), it’s my brain being kinda overstimulated and me trying to source some of the things I got rid of over the years as tech became shinier and newer. The leap from a Motorola Razr flip to the first iPhone was a heck of a lot bigger than the leap from an iPhone 13 to an iPhone 15.

Inspirations

I started down this path because I was overwhelmed by CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY. So I did a little reading.

Many people reference Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism when talking about living a slightly less internet-connected life. I read a little bit of it, and no shade to Mr. Newport, but I often feel inadequate when reading those kinds of books. Like, no, I’m sorry, I can’t just decide not to use email and tell everyone that’s how it’s going to be. I work remotely with a variety of clients; I don’t get to dictate how they run their business operations.

The book that really got my mental gears churning was Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! by Julio Vincent Gambuto.

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Loading www.juliovincent.com⁠

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I really had begun to live in a pile of subscriptions competing for my attention (email, texts) and money (apps) over time. So I started cutting them down—including spending four hours dutifully unsubscribing from every single different email alias the U.S. Democratic Party (and occasionally the Republican Party) has emailed me random crap from over the past decade-plus.

That’ll be an ongoing work in progress, though, as we all know the email cascade never ends. The other changes I’m making are where I’m seeing some concrete results.

1. Timekeeping

I didn’t consciously make this decision so much as I set my Apple Watch on the edge of the bathroom sink and it fell off, smashing on the tile. Not wanting to pay for an entire Apple Watch again, I opted for an analog Garmin on Backmarket—with a hidden digital display that pops up when you tap the face.

Turns out, I love it. No notifications. No pings, no dings. The battery lasts a week. It’s waterproof. It looks cute. I can see health stats when and if I want to. I can easily swap it out for my fully analog Citizen Eco-Drive watch at any time without a weirdly square tan line peeking out around the edges.

Cost: $80 (refurbished secondhand)

2. Music

It gradually dawned on me over time that even though I paid for Spotify Premium, I wasn’t really discovering new music. I’d listen to the same pre-made playlists they showed me on my Home Screen, day in and day out. One day I opened up Spotify to discover I was in a beta group to test out a video-centric feed. I immediately canceled my subscription in a fit of pique.

And I started going back toward music I owned. There are so many artists that I love, but hadn’t listened to in a while because they weren’t showing up in my Spotify algorithms—among them Garbage, Hole, Veruca Salt, SYML, and Matt Pond PA. While I (regretfully) got rid of all my physical albums years ago, I still had plenty of digital music files.

For music discovery, I began listening to free Pandora stations while in the car or cleaning the house. Pandora’s music discovery engine has gotten really good, y’all! I also started listening to mixes on YouTube while I work, and picking up some recommendations from that algorithm, too. I’ve actually found two new (to me) musicians/groups I really like this way—Sleep Theory and Eivør.

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From there I:

Made a Bandcamp account for DRM-free MP3 & FLAC purchases

Bought a CD drive so I can digitize any secondhand CDs I get going forward

Bought an iPod with a refurbished battery

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I’d forgotten how good the sound quality on the classic iPod was. It’s great; I truly love listening to music on it instead of my phone. I missed having a dedicated device for music and I didn’t even realize it. And yes, these old things still sync with MacBooks!

(I did consider going back to vinyl but decided not to at this time given the space that vinyl takes up. Plus, the iPod is portable, allowing me to keep my phone turned off or out of sight in more situations).

Cost: $15 (CD drive) + $34 (iPod) - $150 (year of music subscription)

Running total: -$21

3. Sleep

I’d previously subscribed to the Get Sleepy podcast and always listened to an episode while falling asleep. But as part of my new push, I wanted fewer subscriptions AND to keep my phone out of the bedroom at night.

As an anxious sort, though, I like having some sort of meditative track to listen to as I drift off. So I picked up a French device called the

Morphee⁠

. It’s based on principles of a mindfulness technique called sophrology, and is, like the iPod, an absolute delight to listen to.

Cost: $180 (Morphee for night + day version) - $50 (Get Sleepy annual subscription)

Running total: $109

4. Entertainment

I used to subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Kindle Unlimited. And we had cable. Together, my husband and I whittled these down to two: Hulu and Apple TV. I then bought a secondhand DVD/Bluray player, too.

This was facilitated, in part, by the fact that I moved. I wound up in a fantastic library system with loads of digital and physical media—I can get nearly any book I want in a variety of formats, can log into a service called

Kanopy⁠

right on my TV, and easily find something to watch from their DVD selection.

Cost: $30 (DVD player) + $150 (year of Apple TV) - $360 (year of cancelled subscriptions) - $240 (year without cable)

Running total: -$311

5. Communicating with friends

This was decently easy due to my age, I think. While my friends and I did send interesting or funny posts to each other through Instagram, nobody batted an eye when I said I was pulling the plug on social media. I deleted my Reddit account (I still lurk sometimes), deactivated Instagram, and reduced Facebook to a shell of an account for Marketplace purposes only.

Just text me the funny shit, I said, and they did. I also find that I now do more FaceTime and phone calls with friends, and exchange lots of voice messages. The latter may be because I moved further away from some pals, though. Either way, it’s nice to see their faces and hear their voices.

I have zero problems using my phone for this—it’s the core function of a phone!

Cost: $0

Running total: -$311

6. Work

This is the hardest category by far to reduce screens and subscriptions in; my work is with and on websites. I’m self-employed, so I have to pay for a variety of tools and services that I use in my work.

I did take a good hard look at my work subscriptions, but honestly, most of them are necessary and help me make more money. I was able to migrate a few to a lifetime license purchase.

And while I can’t stop working on the computer, I did want a way that I could step back from glowing screens if I needed to. After about a year of consideration, I wound up getting a Remarkable 2 tablet.

This was by far my most expensive low-tech purchase, and kind of redundant since I already have an iPad Pro. I love e-ink, though, and decided that it was a worthwhile investment as it would allow me to step away from backlit screens (which are hard to work on if I have a headache) and actually do work without being connected to the internet, when possible—even though you can use WiFi to transfer files to the Remarkable, it doesn’t have an internet browser. Not even a clunky little one like you find on some Kindles.

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2024 tech and twenty-year-old tech in blissful internet-free harmony

2024 tech and twenty-year-old tech in blissful internet-free harmony

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I bought a keyboard case for my Remarkable so I can type up drafts and outlines. I also save articles I want to read as PDFs and regularly transfer them over via USB-C cable. Crossword puzzles, too—I was buying books of crosswords, but it turns out you can still pull them as PDFs from many newspaper websites.

It was that realization—the crossword puzzles—that made me realize I (like nearly everyone, I think, who isn’t sailing the high seas 🏴‍☠️) had slowly slid into an existence where everything was on the internet and we had to pay for it. Turns out, if you want to do the NYT crossword, you don’t have to pay them for their app or a book of their puzzles. You can just download it for free every day via the Seattle Times, which syndicates the NYT crossword. Here you go:

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NY Times Crossword | The Seattle Times www.seattletimes.com⁠

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The Denver Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, and WSJ all make their crosswords free to download, too. Like, I could have been doing these for free on my iPad all along, but the iPad is set up in a way that puts the internet subscription version of things front and center through apps that you’re encouraged to browse and buy. The Remarkable makes you think, okay, is there a way to put what I’d like to do on here?

Cost: $450 (Remarkable 2) + $150 (secondhand keyboard case) - $30 (approx. annual crossword puzzle book spend)

Running total: $239

7. Photography

I absolutely still take pictures with my phone. But I’m getting back into film photography, as it lets me take pictures without getting distracted by the shiny screen. Plus, there’s something nice about not having the instant gratification of the photo—as my phone replaced more of my single-purpose devices over the years, I got so used to that instant gratification that isn’t actually necessary. Or even that gratifying, really.

I bought and cleaned up an

Olympus Pen-EE⁠

from 1961. It’s a half frame camera, which means that there are two shots per exposure. A roll of 36-exposure film actually gives me 72 shots. I also enjoy the aspect of figuring out how I can pair two shots together, as they’ll develop side-by-side.

Film is actually getting easier to find again, though I’ve considered getting a screenless digital “toy camera” like the PaperShoot or CampSnap as another option. It isn’t instant, but also doesn’t take 2+ weeks via mail to develop.

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Photo taken on B&W Fujifilm with a vintage Olympus Pen-EE half-frame camera.

Photo taken on B&W Fujifilm with a vintage Olympus Pen-EE half-frame camera.

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Cost: $36 (camera) + $2 (new camera foam) + $100 (est. year of film & developing fees)

Running total: $377

The current (low) tech stack

At present, I’ve got a:

DVD player

CD burner

iPod

Camera

Morphee devices

Remarkable

B&N Nook (which I already owned in addition to lots of paper books)

Yes, that’s a lot of devices for what I could technically just do on my phone and iPad. But having the ability to separate my activities—and be internet-disconnected while doing so—is doing a lot of good for my tension levels, eyesight, and headaches.

I recognize that the ability to purchase and store these devices isn’t for everyone. While I feel that a $377 final cost in the first year is pretty good (and will pay for itself quickly with another year of reduced subscriptions—even when we factor in buying some music and film), it would of course have been even cheaper to cancel all that stuff and just use my phone.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for paying artists and creators for their work—I’m back to buying music, after all. But, like the crossword puzzles, there are many things that have been gradually shifted to or reintroduced to us as an internet-connected subscription model—even though they still exist in other, free, forms.

So, unlike many of the thinkpieces and YouTube videos out there, I’m not going to tell you what you should do. Just what I did do.

Was the internet a mistake? I don’t know. Probably. I’m trying to do my part to not to make it suck.

And if a solar flare ever does end our internet, well, at least I’ll still have some music to jam out to.

5. Communicating with friends

6. Work

7. Photography

The current (low) tech stack

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