Nicholas Carr relates the tale of Juan Rodriguez, a writer for the Montreal Gazette, who chose to disconnect from the web after a move to a new apartment. Rodriguez still spends two hours a day in an Internet cafe, but otherwise stays offline.

Strangely, I find myself in the exact same position. Due to technical difficulties, and the almost criminal slowness of my cable company’s Internet installation service, I’ve been offline for the last two weeks, and can’t expect to be back on the web until mid-August.

Rodriguez reports feeling liberated from an “always on” existence, rediscovering his love of reading and slowing things down. While I acknowledge some truth to those statements — I have rediscovered a novel left by the wayside for several months — I also spend a lot of time in Internet cafes, and don’t find it all that easy to compartmentalize my online existence. Every time I need to find a phone number, get technical support, look up directions, respond to an issue at work, or ask someone a simple question after 10 p.m., I am thrown for a loop. Do I call information? Drive into the office? Pull out a map and waste a tank of gas getting lost? Start phoning people at 1 a.m.?

Unplugging sounds nice in theory, but I’m not finding the lack of easy information access all the liberating… in fact, the word I might chose would be limiting.

Rediscovering that book has been nice, though.