Word: notcomguy
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DotComGuy's adversary, his Luddite doppelganger, is Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, 42, a.k.a. NotComGuy. Vaguely troubled by his dependence on electronics, NotComGuy cooked up his own experiment. Instead of withdrawing from human society into his computer, NotComGuy set out to withdraw from his computer--and his cell phone and fax machine as well--into human society. Reasoning that "this stunt has a difficulty factor 52 times greater than DotComGuy's bagatelle," he announced he would go cold turkey for a week, then report on his discoveries in print...
...results of this cultural struggle were announced by Zorn last week, and they're not encouraging for those who yearn to return to simpler times. NotComGuy lost. He snapped under the strain. "You kind of get addicted," he confessed, "to being in touch with everything at all times." Cut off from his e-mail, he felt alone, adrift. "You can exist without it, sure," he said. "You're just sort of living in a different milieu." Worse, the journalist learned he wasn't able to write coherent sentences without his word processor. "The new style becomes a scribbly, scratchy mess...
...meantime, Zorn, having shed his NotComGuy handle, remains unimpressed by his rival's novelty act. "I don't think it's very hard what he's doing. It's like Bio-Dome. It's Gilligan's Island, except he has everything." Zorn may have a point. If his own experience is a guide, the true test of DotComGuy's character will come 11 months from now, when he will have to face the outside world again, no longer safely cocooned inside the Web. Perhaps he'll retreat when he finally sees his shadow...
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