Flash freezing a laptop may be a little extreme, but I sympathize with this professor. To make his point about a classroom computer ban, he demonstrated the effects of dry ice on a laptop.
Even with the visual, I bet it wasn’t easy for his students to unplug during class.
It certainly isn’t easy for me to go offline for any length of time. I hate to miss anything. I feel guilty for not staying in touch, and I fear the backlog of emails when I return. But, I’ve also noticed that I get very cranky when I don’t have time away from the computer to decompress and renew. Some days, I need to unplug completely, without having to justify why I’m not tweeting, blogging, or updating status on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I still love social media, but I don’t want to be constantly connected.
I reserve the right to be silent.
