J.D. Bentley argues that we have become distracted and enslaved by our constant connectivity to technology through handheld devices. Our lives are lived inside our own heads, fueled by the screens of our phones, tablets, computers and TVs. We are compelled to spend our days excessively updating social media and exaggerating our lives rather than engaging in real experiences. Additionally, we have trained our brains to seek shallow information from endless online sources in a mindless consumption of data rather than seeking meaningful knowledge through deep reflection. The solution is for us to escape our "glowing captors" by exercising self-discipline and moderation in our technology use in order to look up from our screens and experience the

1. Digital Asceticism
Unplugging and Looking Around Us

2. Why?
Or The Video that Started it All

3. About Digital Asceticism
JD Bentley

4. The Problem
 We are at a turning point. Technology in the past 50
years has developed rapidly. It coaxes us into the future
with its novelty and with its promise of the good life. It
persuades us to abandon what is proven and to go afoot
into an unexplored wilderness.
 We are being distracted and conditioned by handheld
devices and incessant connectivity. We’ve been
enslaved, yet remain unaware.

5. “Our Glowing Captors”
 Our lives are lived inside our own heads, fueled by the
flickering faces of our glowing captors–the iPhones and
iPads, televisions and laptops, those rectangular
manifestations of a hollow alternate reality.
 We’re compelled, through the power of their glow, to
spend our days typing like narcissistic fools, exaggerating
the things we’ve done and the things we will do to the
point of fabrication. Writing of what we do far longer
than we spend actually doing it.

6. Mindless Consumption

7. “It is possible to store the mind
with a million facts and still be
entirely uneducated.”
- Aleck Bourne

8. What is Mindless Consumption
 confusion of the mere exposure to and memorization of
any fact with the acquisition of valuable knowledge
 With vast amounts of information available online, it has
become increasingly tempting to let ourselves be
drowned in data
 Not only tempting, but preferable

9. Mindless Consumption cont.
 We have trained our brains to spark with pleasure each
time there is a new tweet, Facebook update, piece of
trivia, etc that we see.
 We thrive on the accumulation of thousands of pieces of
shallow information every day, information that comes
quickly and effortlessly

10. “true knowledge comes slowly
and laboriously”

11.  It has nothing to do with making yourself available to vast
amounts of information. It has everything to do with
discerning the best information and reflecting deeply
upon it, putting it into practice if applicable and refining
it through experience.
 The web as it exists today does much more to facilitate
the creation and acquisition of brief nonsense.

12. Cutting the Ties that Bind
 During our transition into the digital age, we’ve forgotten
the lessons learned in the analog world: those of
moderation, self-discipline and abstention.
What is the Solution?

13. It is ourselves.
To escape the glowing captors, it’s not the technology we must
tame. It is our nature.

14. Something Silly
Look around you

15. J.D. Bentley’s site
Credit where credit is due