Book Review: The Winter of our Disconnect

Reviewed by Kirsten

“The Winter of our Disconnect” by Susan Maushart is part human experiment, part anthropological study, part homage to Thoreau.  I love humans, find anthropology fascinating and adore Thoreau (my first reading of ‘Walden’ as a nineteen year old student was a mind blowing epiphany); I knew this was the book for me. The author writes about a six month period where she and her three teenage children literally disconnect from the technology that has become their lives and environment.  At first I didn’t know how closely I would be able to relate as my own children are much younger and we have always been very clear about boundaries regarding ‘screens’ in our family. My kids watch DVDs but no TV; they use the computer at school and maybe once a week at home. They are allowed to use their Nintendo DS for an hour a day on weekends. All very clear, no problems at all. We are nothing like the teenagers in Maushart’s family who were completely immersed in their technology. That’s what I thought. The thing that I was able to relate to though, was the heart of the book. Maushart undertook the experiment because she was worried about her kids, worried about how they were using their time, space, and minds. I recognised this worry.

I was already converted to the book’s ‘cause’, but the only person in my family who seems to use technology in a worrisome way is…me.  So I read this book as though I had a full length mirror placed in front of me. It wasn’t a comfortable read and it made me squirm. Maushart is incisive; she cuts to the core and mixes her arguments with humour. Actually ‘humour’ is understating things, she made me spit my tea out from laughing several times.  She doesn’t take the easy, predictable route of casting longingly back to halcyon days pre-internet or mobile phone. She recognizes the role that technology plays in our lives, but goes on to question our total submersion.  The truth of this struck me as I was staffing a lamington stall on Election Day and took this book along with me to help fill in the quiet bits.  “The Winter of our Disconnect” shone a spotlight on things I had grown to accept (actually, embrace) over the years. People spoke on their phones about random topics while they were voting.  “Hang on, I just have to number some boxes” said one.  They spoke on their phones while they pointed at lamingtons and put money down on the table. Some of this is just bad manners, I’m sure, but it got me thinking. What was so important? Or is that beside the point?

There were parts of the book that I found difficult to relate to, and parts that made me frustrated at the entitlement of her children. I don’t know any 9 year olds with fridges in their bedrooms; this concept is foreign to me. I have no idea whether it is a wide occurrence or not. I’m not willing to give an absolute ‘children should not have a fridge in their bedroom’, but I do genuinely wonder why they would need one!  It’s not that fridge was a big part of the book, but chunks of the book were socially foreign to me.

Aside from this really quite minor aspect, I found this book hard to put down.  It was liberating to reflect on the technology that is useful to me and then to think about that which actually hinders my productivity at work. It was confronting to look at the technology that draws my attention away from the things that are important to me at home. For me the internet is a friend that I need to put clear boundaries around, or she has the potential to become one of those demanding, OTT, destructive friends. I love my twitter, my facebook, this blog, but it’s too easy to live a life submerged in these things and not, to quote Thoreau “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”.

I’d recommend the book to anyone who wonders at the role technology plays in our lives, who wonders about whether it’s impacting on our families and communities, and I’d especially recommend it to anyone who can’t imagine a life with no I-phone. It seems apt to finish off with Thoreau too. “A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting”. So I have put down “The Winter of our Disconnect”. My challenge is now is to act and I think I’ll be richer for it.