Last Saturday was the National Day of Unplugging created by the Jewish technology advocacy group Reboot.
Today. British charity Practical Action offers us No Tech Day which encourages tech addicts to see if they can give up phones, laptops, and consoles for a day. They allow you to tell your own story or nominate someone you think should participate.
The goal is
“to raise awareness of how much we all rely on and use gadgets in our everyday life, and think what life is like for people in the developing world who do not have the same access to technology and energy.”
In a fun twist, they are offering an iPad to one lucky winner who gets voted the biggest tech addict, but also participates in No Tech Day.
I wonder how well something like this would go over in the Western Christian community. I’ve seen a few cases where a call for a technology fasting is interpreted as legalistic, anti-technological, old fashioned, or unrealistic. Yet it’s interesting two groups in a row from outside the Christian world have been comfortable calling for technology fasts.
I think Western Christianity’s defensiveness to technology fasts speaks to the need for one.