Digital detox tourism: Practices of analogization

https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211072808 new media & society 2024, Vol. 26(2) 1056 –1073 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14614448211072808 journals.sagepub.com/home/nms Digital detox tourism: Practices of analogization Urs Stäheli Universität Hamburg, Germany Luise Stoltenberg HafenCity Universität Hamburg, Germany Abstract Technological disconnectivity has turned into a tourist attraction in its own right: digital detox tourism celebrates temporary disconnection as a means for experiencing an “authentic” world. With pervasive digital media and a strong impetus to being available 24/7, this tourism has to answer not only the question of what has to be done to become disconnected, but also it has to highlight the pleasures disconnection may afford. Drawing on two case studies—a discourse analysis of self-organized unplugged travel writing and an ethnography of the detox event Camp Grounded—we argue that digital detox tourism relies heavily on staging and performing a distinction between the analog and the digital. The article introduces the notion “analogization” to capture practices, media, and infrastructure which support the creation and the blurring of this distinction. Thus, we argue that analogization, in contrast to digitalization, emphasizes that there is no “analog” per se. Keywords Analogization, digital detox, digital dualism, dis/connection, disconnectivity, nostalgia, tourism, unplugged traveling What 20 years ago was only seen as a hassle has now turned into a tourist attraction in its own right: technological disconnectivity. In some hotels and restaurants, the “We have WiFi” sign has been replaced by one that touts a “Guaranteed WiFi-free zone.” Corresponding author: Luise Stoltenberg, HafenCity Universität Hamburg, Stadtplanung, Henning-Voscherau-Platz 1, 20457 Hamburg, Germany. Email: [email protected] 1072808NMS0010.1177/14614448211072808new media & societyStäheli and Stoltenberg research-article2022 Article Stäheli and Stoltenberg 1057 Disconnection has become a marketable entity, promising to help us step out of digital networks, at least for a while. The tourism industry was quick to brand this experience as “unplugged travel” or “digital detox.” This touristic interest in digital disconnection is embedded within a wider discourse that problematizes the effects of permanent connectivity. The crisis diagnosis stems from the psychological diagnosis of “burnout” (Neckel and Wagner, 2013) and from cultural critics who blame the loss of “authenticity” through digitalization (Turkle, 2011) on policies restricting individual connectivity, such as the “right to disconnect” in France (Jauréguiberry, 2014). The hyperconnectivity of networked societies is increasingly problematized as unhealthy and a security risk (Stäheli, 2020). As a result, the concept of disconnection has started to change its meaning. It no longer necessarily refers only to technical failures or to those who have been left behind in the digitalization process; rather, disconnection now has more positive connotations and is increasingly seen as a practice of its own (Hesselberth, 2018). Media theorists, for example, discuss how disengagement from social media sites such as Facebook works (Karppi, 2018); media artists explore the aesthetics of disconnection (e.g. Hito Steyerl, “How not to be seen”), and political movements use disconnection as an emancipatory slogan. Within this broader context of emerging cultures of disconnection, digital detox tourism occupies a special position. Disconnection is branded as a valuable and positive experience—and eventually even a commodity of contemporary experience economies (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) which has to be produced by a complex and heterogeneous tourism assemblage (Franklin, 2004). The interest in detox or unplugged travel goes hand in hand with the development of imaginaries of disconnection (Germann Molz, 2012; Sutton, 2017: 153ff.) and the creation of practices of disconnection and infrastructures of unplugging (such as wireless hotels or the rearticulation of “dead zones” as tourist attractions; Pearce and Gretzel, 2012). One might argue that with digital detox tourism the never-ending urge of network societies to economically exploit connectivity may have reached a new peak. Now even spending time outside networks is addressed as temporary break, however, framed by the logic of connectivity—thereby reinforcing the power of networked capitalism. Commodified disconnection is actively produced by network societies, creating a new enclosure (Landnahme) of the disconnected. Although we do not want to dispute this claim, such a reading implies a functionalist account of appropriation. Rather, we want to argue, it is precisely the “commodification” of digital detox tourism that is also an epistemological advantage, since making disconnection into a tourist experience has to spell out how disconnections—as imaginary and deficient they may be—can be lived. Digital detox tourism has to answer the question of what has to be done to become disconnected as well as highlighting the pleasures disconnection may afford. What becomes a structuring device for this challenge is the opposition between an analog and digital world. However, instead of assuming that digital detox tourism simply uncovers a lost world or that it is delusional with its hope for authenticity, our central question is how the analog is performed. We will call this process analogization, a process that has been neglected in the often-teleological discussions of digitalization since it tends to see the analog either as left-over or mere ideology. Analogization refers to practices and infrastructures creating analog environments and subjects. Thus, analogization does not only address ideas of a lost analog world, but also how these worlds are created by mundane 1058 new media & society 26(2) practices. Such practices perform a cut between the digital and the analog, thereby producing their own images of what doing offline might mean. Our study is framed in media theoretical terms, not least since the figure of the tourist is highly mediatized and since detox tourism defines itself by its media critique—that is, by salvaging a lost analog world or the real life (“IRL”) or an authentic offline experience (1). We will argue that this process is highly intertwined with digitalization and also a process with its own positivity (2). To better understand how analogization is performed, we executed two cases studies (3): a discourse analysis of travel writing about self-organized unplugging (3.1) and an ethnography of “Camp Grounded,” a digital detox summer camp in the United States (3.2). We have chosen these two cases to cover pre-organized and self-organized touristic practices of analogization. In the ensuing discussion, we draw six dimensions of analogization from the case studies (4). We conclude by underlining the strong connection between analogization and power structures (5). Digital detox tourism and the mediated figure of the tourist The figure of the tourist is characterized by an ambivalent history of mediatization and demediatization: tourism is based on imaginaries1 of escape as well as the documentation of this escape. The tourist gaze, as John Urry and Jonas Larsen (2011) have suggested, is structured through the camera. Taking photos may make the “uselessness” of pleasure travel more bearable by creating an essential activity for the tourist. The tourist starts to observe the world as if she were a camera, framing potential pictures, looking for viewpoints, sights, and portraits with locals. With the advent of social media, this mediated tourist experience has been intensified and networked (cf. Jansson, 2018). It is this always already mediatized figure of the tourist that paradoxically has turned into the central figure of escaping digital media in digital detox tourism. Digital detox tourism navigates this paradox by calling for a temporary abstinence from digital media. It tries to salvage the classical touristic imaginary which is based on the idea of a temporary escape from the burden and boredom of one’s working and everyday life (Cohen, 1979; Germann Molz, 2012). Everyday life is seen as becoming more and more formalized, rationalized, and eventually inauthentic. This creates—as MacCannell (1999) argues—a thirst for authenticity, which the tourist hopes to experience during his or her travels. Digital detox tourism re-articulates this yearning as temporary disconnection. Thus, disconnection becomes a practice for producing authentic experiences, characterized by the absence of digital media. Already the discussion of classical tourism has argued that this argument overstates the desire for authenticity— indeed, there are many touristic forms (e.g. adventure tourism) for which authenticity seems to be a minor motive. Moreover, the analytical use of authenticity produces problems of its own, since it presupposes a fantasy about a true world or an authentic self (cf. Wang, 1999). That is why some authors have argued that it is not always authentic experiences that characterize tourism but, rather, extraordinary experiences (Urry and Larsen, 2011): it is not necessarily about visiting authentic sites, but about experiencing new places, food, smells, landscapes, and people. The logic governing the argument is the juxtaposition of ordinary everyday life and the extraordinary. Given the omnipresence of Stäheli and Stoltenberg 1059 mobile media devices, the distinction between home and away starts to blur (Stors et al., 2019). This creates a threat to the classical touristic imaginary of escape, such that salvaging a moment of the extraordinary requires new techniques of “encapsulation” (Jansson, 2007). Digital detox tourism answers the need of producing an encapsulated touristic experience by returning to the idea of the touristic extraordinary. It is not primarily about visiting an exotic place; instead, it is about the personal or collective experience of disconnecting from digital media and of how to organize a disconnected life. By doing this, it strongly appeals to the desire for authenticity, but now framed as subjective authenticity, threatened by digital connectivity. Digital detox tourism addresses two aspects of disconnection: the process of severing a connection and the state of being disconnected. As our analysis will show, this tourism uses rituals for staging the process of disconnection and tries to enhance the experience of the disconnected state. Simply doing away with digital devices does not yet produce a “healthy” subject. Rather, it is necessary to slowly, sometimes even painfully remove the “poison” of the digital from the touristic subject. The self-description as “digital detox” reframes the whole touristic experience as a particular media experience. It has been argued that digital detox tourism even fetishizes digital technologies with the very attempt of their expulsion (Fish, 2017). The digital might be the poison but it persists by defining the whole touristic experience and being the object of purification technologies. One might criticize this paradox of digital tourism; indeed, it is very easy to highlight its contradictions. Detox camps rely on intensive public relations (PR) work in social media, and after the event participants often share their experiences on social media. However, what makes digital detox tourism analytically interesting is that it addresses the question of how to accomplish and to temporarily life a live without connection. It allows us to analyze the performativity of the digital/ analog distinction—the question of how an analog experience is being created. What interests us are practices of analogization: how the analog, framed by digital media, is produced. From “digital dualism” toward practices of analogization Digital detox tourism articulates and mixes two crucial and distinct logics, best exemplified by the slogan “Disconnect to Reconnect” which is used by Camp Grounded (2020), one of the most popular digital detox camps and one of our case studies. This slogan tries to accomplish two very different things at the same time: disconnecting and reconnecting. What might seem to be a paradoxical injunction is—at first sight—easily solved by implicitly distinguishing two different types of connections: there are connections established by digital networks (e.g. friends in social media), and there are “true” connections in the “real” world (such as friends who are “physically” present). Thus, a less catchy but more precise version of the slogan would read, “Disconnect digitally to reconnect analogically” (Sutton, 2017). This implicit distinction not only structures the marketing of digital detox tourism, but is also—albeit in a more complex form—familiar to media studies. Most prominently, José van Dijck (2013: 12) distinguishes between automated connectivity and human 1060 new media & society 26(2) connectedness: connectivity is automatically produced by social media platforms, exploiting, and commodifying the human desire of connectedness. Digital detox tourism shares the critique of digital connectivity, but not that of commodification. Instead of analyzing the “commoditizing relationships—turning connectedness into connectivity by means of coding technologies” (van Dijck, 2013: 16), digital detox tourism confronts us with the reverse question: How do we turn connectivity into “disconnected connectedness” by abstaining from coding technologies? This connectedness is neither that of early, more democratic social networks, nor purely that of an immediate, direct connection. Although digital detox tourism is characterized by a desire for authenticity, this does not mean that it develops the fantasm of a world without media. Rather, this more authentic world is conceived of as an analog world, using the analog at the same time as token for realness without media as well as header for different analog media techniques. A utopia of “real” immediacy is articulated with that of analog mediacy, thus linking two different aspects: on the one hand, a world inhabited by flesh-and-blood friends, nice smells, and meaningful conversations; on the other hand, a world of books, maps, and analog cameras. Both of these dimensions of the analog, as envisioned from the perspective of digital connectivity, share their demarcation from the digital world, which is seen as governed by cold algorithms and a constant pressure of “real-time” communication. The analog is seen as more real, the only place where authentic experiences and subjectivities are still possible; the digital, in contrast, is characterized as an unreal, simulated world of pseudo communication. Nathan Jurgenson (2011, 2013) has forcefully argued against such a “digital dualism,” implicitly drawing from a wide range of media theory (e.g. Hayles, 2010) on the blurring of the digital and analog)—a dualism that structures not only the popular discourse about social media but also many academic accounts (e.g. Turkle, 2011). The detox movement is a good example of such a dualism since it reinforces the boundary between the digital and the physical by a “fetishization of the offline,” which is seen as the ultimate place of the real (Jurgenson, 2013). This state of being offline is a “phantom,” since the “logic of social media follows us long after we log out.” Although we agree with this critique of “digital dualism,” the insistence on its purely ideological character is problematic as well. Such a critique precludes an analysis of how the “offline” is produced and how the doing of disconnection is embedded within digital cultures. Voluntary non-use of digital media is, thus, not only an absence, but comprises distinctive practices of its own (Baumer et al., 2015). Critiques of digital detox have stressed that “detoxing” is part of neoliberal modes of power and self-control (Syvertsen and Enli, 2019). Disconnection has become a personal responsibility, thus individualizing and depoliticizing the problems that hegemonic modes of connectivity produce (Fish, 2017). Indeed, many popular accounts of unplugging emphasize the enormous self-discipline that unplugging requires—supported by a growing market of digital self-help books. However, a mere analysis of digital detox tourism as a neoliberal mode of governmentality still presupposes that the analog is only a false ideology and that digital duality is stable—that there are clear criteria distinguishing the two spheres. We will argue that for digital detox tourism (and for media theory as well) disconnection does not automatically mean doing without media; rather, its goal is to rediscover and use analog media, however, often Stäheli and Stoltenberg 1061 unwittingly, framed by digital connectivity. The analog only acquires its fascination by the juxtaposition with the digital. We will show how mundane practices, such as absent notes, digital marketing of analog experiences, or the loss of connection on the journey to a detox holiday, are of importance of how the analog is produced. This is a crucial shift from seeing the nondigital as simply physical, since it points toward the mediated character of what is seen as offline. “Offline,” then, is defined not just in purely negative terms, as unplugging, but also positively, as living analogically, including the usage of analog media. We will argue that the distinction between the analog and the digital is not even close to being stable. Rather, the distinction has to be performatively reproduced and enacted, navigating the oscillation of the analog between immediacy and mediacy. This fuzziness of the digital/analog distinction also characterizes its rich conceptual history (Buckley, 2014; Sterne, 2016), which we can only briefly touch on: “The analog concerns all that is continuous, fluctuating, and qualitatively variable within communication, whereas the digital concerns all that is discontinuous, boundary marking, and quantitatively controlling within communication” (Buckley, 2014: 7). Although the distinction was first established with the invention of analog computing in the 1940s, it only became popularized in the 1980s (Sterne, 2016: 31f.). The original—still existing—meaning of the analog was more clearly defined as a technical mode of representation using “variable qualities [. . .] to represent the qualities that are being computed” (ibid.: 34). In the 1980s, Sterne continues, “analog” became a broader term, increasingly denoting everything which is not digital; and now the analog has come to function as the opposite of the digital. Drawing from media theoretical concepts (such as Kittler) that conceive of the analog as the real, a strong connection between the continuity of life, senses, and media was established. It is this retroactive invention of the analog which has turned it into an ambivalent concept: On the one hand, it refers to concrete media technologies, on the other hand, it refers to the absence of all media. Our interest in reviewing the conceptual history of digital/analog is not to fix its meaning; rather, to pose the question of how the distinction is produced. We call this practices of analogization, thus not defining the analog as fixed property of media technologies, but as an enactment based on imaginaries of the analog. Similarly, it has been argued to analyze the contemporary fascination with analog media in relational terms as “retromedia-in-practice” (Magaudda and Minniti, 2019). Digital detox tourism is a laboratory for producing a distinction between the digital and the analog. The assumption that not only digital connectivity but also analog connectedness has to be produced is not unproblematic: on the one hand, the experience of disconnection is staged by newly invented rituals and devices, and in this sense, it is a staged experience of disconnectivity; on the other hand, digital detox tourism has to posit this analog experience as something “authentic” and “real”—as something which has always been there but which is in increasing danger of vanishing. Case studies: unplugged travel and Camp Grounded We have chosen two case studies for analyzing practices of analogization in digital detox tourism: individual, self-organized unplugged travel and collective, packaged digital detox experiences. The case study on unplugged travel is a document analysis of recent 1062 new media & society 26(2) US-American travel blogs and writing (2009–2016) that explicitly focus on the usage of media and detoxing during a journey. The selection of material is not representative, but allowed us to identify typical argumentative strategies of how digital and analog media are problematized. For the selection of the material, it was crucial that these texts do not only thematized media but that they formulate explicit recommendations of how to travel unplugged, thus pointing at concrete practices of analogization. The case study, Camp Grounded, was chosen because it was the first big commercial organization of digital detox trips in the United States. The 4-day summer camp celebrating digital disconnection was founded by Levi Felix in 2011 after he was hospitalized due to severe exhaustion from his 70-hour work weeks at a tech startup (Mele, 2017). The first Camp Grounded was held in summer 2012. All ethnographic material discussed in this article was collected during a stay at the Camp Grounded session from 19 to 22 May 2017 near Mendocino, CA, and also includes an interview with Levi Felix. This session seemed well suited for studying practices of disconnection in digital detox tourism, as its venue is close to Silicon Valley where connectivity is key. Research was done mainly by covert participatory observation (Spicker, 2011). This method was chosen because it allows to learn about actual practices of disconnection at camp firsthand and to take into account sensuous data—an aspect which is essential for the analog nostalgia analyzed in this article. Given this is an often morally criticized approach (cf. Spicker, 2011), the decision to remain a covert observer was discussed with Levi Felix who agreed to the planned ethnography on the condition that other campers’ individual detox experiences must remain undisturbed. Keeping research covert was made especially easy by Camp Grounded’s rules: campers are neither supposed to talk about their jobs nor to use their real names. And as the event prohibits the use of digital technology, handwritten notes, emotions, and reflections were kept in a field journal. Detoxing on your own with unplugged traveling This section turns to individual tourists who try to travel “unplugged.” Based on a brief analysis of travel writing on unplugging, we traced two dimensions of analogization practices. Preparing disconnection. Traveling unplugged has effects even before the departure, since it changes how the journey is organized. It requires more elaborate planning. One travel blog writer gives detailed recommendations about how to inform colleagues: Before You Disconnect: Take these steps to alleviate any pangs of guilt . . . you might have about unplugging from the office: - Leave out-of-office messages on email and voice mail explaining that you’ll be out of range until your return; [. . .]. - Prep colleagues for your absence. [. . .] - Make a list of true emergencies that merit interrupting your vacation (if you can be reached). (Helgoe, 2009) These notifications frame a space of temporary disconnection. They inform contacts not only about one’s absence but also about one’s future return. Implicitly, these Stäheli and Stoltenberg 1063 messages tell their recipients that there is no reason to worry. It is only a temporary absence—not a “real” disconnection, only an act of personal mindfulness, fully under control. Thus, the information of one’s absence is more than a simple statement—it normalizes the disconnection by making it a legitimate part of self-care of the networked subject. The need for such careful notifications points to how frightening an unannounced departure may be for others. Disconnection has to be controlled and thus becomes a planned and managed event. This space of temporary disconnection is framed by digital technologies—indeed, the notifications will even be sent during one’s absence. This indicates the importance of understanding disconnection in relational terms. It is impossible to escape to a pure space of disconnection, as the touristic “island” image might suggest. The digital framing is essential to that which is being framed. The very wording of disconnection points to this observation: connections are presupposed as a normal state, and its negative side—disconnection—as an interruption of this normalcy, thus fully embedded within an “ethos of connectivity” (Stäheli, 2020). This may explain the frequent use of metaphors from digital culture. Disconnection is described in terms of “unplugging” or “resetting” (Sabbath Season, 2016) metaphors that are intimately connected to the logic of digital technologies. These digital metaphors translate temporary disconnection into normal digital procedures: “unplugging” is intrinsically linked to technological modularity, and a “reset” is a planned new beginning that clears the memory from old files and makes the machine work better. Thus, preparatory work in social media frames future analog experiences, creating the conditions for a temporary analog space. Re-valuing “old” analog media. The planning process also requires the traveler to think about how digital media usually structure her journey and how to find substitutes for digital media. One blogger recommends organizing the journey by means of “old” travel media2 like a phrase book, handwritten hotel information, and spare change for pay phones (Joachimowicz, 2016). Unplugged travel means a return to these old media, which also change their meaning. Travel bloggers rediscover these media and their affordances; they start to resemble a lost and nowadays nearly forgotten land. The fascination with classical travel media underlies the writings of Sara Clemence (2017), which offer an exemplary exposition of the rediscovery of old travel media. She advises the unplugged traveler to “get a guidebook,” since the quality of guidebooks is supposedly higher than that of online resources. Moreover, she lists the media-specific advantages of guidebooks: They don’t require a charger or an internet connection [. . .]. A guidebook might be heavier than a phone, but you can customize it by stapling together selected sections and discard pages along the way to lighten your load. (Clemence, 2017) This description of guidebooks, written from the perspective of a digital media user, emphasizes the materiality of the book. It works even without a connection, it is the ideal medium for situations of digital disconnection. But this does not mean that the book is posited only as an alternative or even opposite media to digital travel apps. Rather, the author reinscribes crucial characteristics of digital media into the analog medium of the 1064 new media & society 26(2) book: it can be shared and customized more easily than digital media. It is easy to discredit this assumption, but what is interesting is that the analog book is partially evaluated by digital criteria such as shareability. The second old media that is necessary for unplugged travel is a paper map: Paper maps have a lot of advantages over way-finding apps. They don’t require a signal and their batteries never run dry. [. . .] Navigating with a map slows things down. It forces you to think about context and to tune in to your surroundings [. . .]. Maps encourage detours and discovery. Most importantly, they make you—and not your phone—responsible for the journey. (Clemence, 2017) Again, the paper medium functions independently of digital connectivity, and it can be personalized. What is new here is the positive re-evaluation of a possible weakness of maps: using maps may be less efficient and thus facilitate “slower” travel. Maps are normally used not by themselves but in connection with other media such as street signs or oral explanations by locals (Brown and Laurier, 2005). The map turns into the medium most closely connected to the original purpose of traveling: traveling is about the unexpected, about getting lost and being immersed the environment. Digital media, in contrast, threaten the essence of traveling by defaulting to the most efficient ways of moving. The figure of the modern tourist is intrinsically mediatized, most prominently indicated by the camera. The issue of photography in unplugged traveling is contentious; some travelers even leave their camera at home. One travel blogger who participated in a digital detox described how difficult she found it to travel without her camera—and she did not in fact succeed: I was supposed to go into this digital detox without a camera. [. . .]. But I secretly brought along a little point-and-shoot, because [. . .] taking photos has actually become a part of my travels— [. . .] I don’t truly enjoy one without the other.” (Amanda, 2016). For many, traveling without a camera is no longer seen as real traveling. The unplugged tourist might be trying to escape, but the escape has to be well documented. The difficulty of separating tourists from their cameras may explain why many digital detox providers actually allow the use of analog cameras. But even when cameras are allowed, the distinction between the digital and the analog underlies the criteria for deciding which cameras are recommended. Camp Grounded, for example, only allowed the usage of one-way cameras. The restricted capacity of a film roll is then turned into a virtue. That limit forces the user to reflect when taking an image: There’s romance and ritual to using film—flicking open the camera to load a new roll, setting the tab on its spool, winding the film back up at the end, clutching a mysterious cache of images in your fist. [. . .] Only when you see the prints will you know what you shot. [. . .] And when you’re done, you don’t just have a chip packed with bits and bytes, but a memory made tangible and frameable—and findable years later in a drawer (Clemence, 2017). In addition to the specific temporality of analog film processing, the camera becomes a tool that can be touched, and the materiality of the camera and of the photos is juxtaposed Stäheli and Stoltenberg 1071 References Amanda (2016) 5 Things I wish I knew before going on a digital detox. 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She holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Hamburg.