When my god-daughter was undertaking a 40-hour famine at her college in Adelaide to raise awareness of world hunger, she was asked to give up two out of three things – food, furniture and technology.

She chose food and furniture. “I felt I couldn’t live without technology.”

On the walk to the boarding gate to catch my flight to Kota Kinabalu this week, I overheard a conversation between a father and his crying son.

“If you don’t stop, I am going to take away your iPad, see how you do without your games and movies,” said the father.
The boy cried even harder.

Last week, I was on Twitter and came across a tweet @Empressrox from Kathleen Tan of AirAsia. “My insane work schedule kept me away fm my social space. A good fren actually called me wondering if I m ok bcoz I hv been absent!”
I have to confess I am as addicted to technology as my god-daughter, the young boy and Kathleen. I have all the signs of addiction.

• I deny it.
• I hide my devices under the bedcovers.
• It’s the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night.
• I do it surreptitiously. Under the table or using my handbag as cover.
• I do it every spare moment I have.

So it is perhaps for my sanity as much as others around me that I raised the idea of an experiment with Luke Clark, editor of Discovery Channel Magazine for Novus Media Solutions.

Luke and I have been exchanging instant messages about how the whole notion of discovery has been corrupted by technology – maps that stop us from getting lost, apps that tell us where to eat and drink because others have been, algorithms that influence how we search and whose website we end up on, friends who tell us what they are up to every single waking moment …

What would it be like to go web-less and device-less for a period of time, we wondered?

Hence this idea – in line with the theme of WIT Conference 2012, “Unplugged: Journey with WIT”, we and Discovery Channel Magazine are launching “Unplugged 480: An experiment in survival”.

We will ask 10 people to go without their devices and stay off the web for two working days. Once those 10 are chosen, we will collaborate on the rules of engagement – but basically it is to live like it was pre-1994, pre-Internet. No emails, no smartphones, no social media, etc.

We will ask them to write about their experience in a journal – pens and pencils allowed. They will be encouraged to illustrate their feelings. They have to be honest. If they fail, they have to “self-destruct” and record the moment of failure so we can record the number of hours our group survived.

We will share their experiences at the WIT Conference, Oct 15-17, as well as on our website and Discovery Channel Magazine’s December issue.

We already have a few volunteers who confessed to their addiction and obviously needed intervention.

Indeed, AirAsia’s Kathleen, who is now in charge of culture as well as commercial at the airline, has also decided to introduce Digital Detox days for staff. “It seems if we detox our bodies, we need to also detox from technology,” she told me.

One person who said an outright no to our experiment is Timothy O’Neil Dunne, managing partner of T2 Impact. “Impossible,” he said. Nevertheless, he was suitably inspired to contribute this essay when he was forced to unplug during a recent vacation in Portugal. Imagine having difficulties detoxing even on vacation …

If after reading Timothy’s experience and you’d like to volunteer for this experiment, email me and state why you’d like to take part.

Note: Bookings will open for WIT Conference 2012 end July. To save your seat, email Gerry Pang.