I empathize greatly with you, Ms. Traister, both in your description of your relatively low use of the tools that enslave -- pardon me, I mean connect -- us (no iPhone, no Blackberry, HELL no to Twitter), and also in your feeling that you still can't escape the lure of the internet and its facile charms. For instance, I read your article instead of doing my timesheet at work. Had I had Freedom, I would not have read your article about Freedom, and by now my timesheet would be done and I'd be on my way home, instead of typing this response to your interesting article. But if I hadn't read your article, I wouldn't know what Freedom is. So now I'm faced with the fact that I needed the internet to read about the technology that promises to save me from the use of too much technology. Can this be true?

I wish I just had more willpower.

Yes, the whole thing makes me feel infantile and weak.

...says she who was just luxuriating in the use of print editions of standard published references like dictionaries and thesauri.

If Rebecca Traister had real gonads she'd give up her dependence on printed knowledge and restrict herself to manuscripts. If it's not worth laboriously copying out by hand, it's not worth knowing. Now that was discipline!

But if you're going to go medieval, why not go the whole way? The hardest of the hard core eschewed any written references whatsoever — having to either memorize something or discard it sure cut down on clutter. Lazy punks with their vellum and ink, what was the world coming to?

This "Freedom" thing sounds altogether too permissive.

Surely there are marriages failing (or at least, in very deep trouble) because people like you and I are married to people like ... my husband. Who doesn't really care. Who comes online three or four times a week to look at Sports Illustrated. com

I wonder if this is a particular habit of people who work for news organizations for a living. I know other journalists who are bad like this.

I was just wishing for an application just like this. Hopefully someone will develop at PC version. Please save me from myself.

Damn, I do appreciate this article Rebecca.

I'm an Internet addict, and I've been alarmed at how tetchy I get when service is (very) occasionally down. It seems intolerable, that half-hour. Memorably irksome.

I seem to have developed a kind of adult ADD from the Net. Next, next, next, a craving for novelty, always looking to see what's changed and new on my blogs an sites last I looked. Like, an hour ago. Or less.

I find myself missing the days when the Internet was slow and sparse with content, so I could get on with art-making, putting paint on canvas. Boredom is actually a great motivator for creativity, and the internet's constant attraction as endless novelty is.. pretty detrimental to that.

But it's my choice, right? I suppose. The net feels like rats in a lab must feel when they hit a lever that gives pleasure. We do call website visits, "hits", at least metrically speaking.

I think of Emily Dickinson, writing by candle-light in her room. How did she do it? we moderns might marvel.

I think eventually many will just start naturally stop craving constant "hits" to get us on through the day. The desire to buy and upgrade (which I think, in some ways, was a good thing) has begun to lessen--not simply, me thinks, because of external constraints: more a collective, alright, enough of that. I just hope that when we get off, we're not just left facing the void.

I love fredom. I went looking for something like it. Before wifi I used to have my wife take my modem with her to work for a blissful Internet free day

I read your article twice, thinking it was me, that perhaps I was missing something of importance.

Then I realized obsessive internet use does melt the brain. I've seen this among friends, family.

Writing becomes too free associative, paragraphs too prolix, grammar becomes a distant memory..it's ADD talk sans Ritalin

Stay away from the internet for six months. Read books. Listen to music. Repeat some mantra. Talk to friends about anything BUT what you read on the internet.

Then return to your piece and re-read it.

Be prepared for a shock

Oh God, I know EXACTLY what you mean, Rebecca. Thanks for saying it out loud. Just a few weeks ago I vowed to family and friends I wasn't going to go online until 2pm. Mornings woudl be web free ... a few days of bliss ensued. I felt so much calmer, clearer, more productive. And then what happened? Feels like it came back more forcefully than ever. And I too don't twitter, facebook or any of those things. I am scared to go near another thing that might hook me. Bring Freedom on for PC, FAST.

I find that when I am not overstressed - life is challenging, but not overwhelming, and nothing is hurting - I don't have the temptation to surf the Internet all the time. Sure, I may read Salon once, or check my email, but then I stop and go on to my daily work.

When I am overstressed, however, the temptation to surf the Internet becomes overwhelming. I circle the same websites over and over and over again. I am in school, and it is interesting that immediately before exams, the compulsion to surf the web is irresistible; immediately after exams, I forget it existed.

So sure, at this point I could use something like Freedom - though what I do is simply unplug my ethernet cable. But I keep in mind that what would really fix the root cause of the problem is not more and more sophisticated technology to prevent me from exercising my compulsions - it's the prevention of the stress that causes these compulsions in the first place.

...in which, to keep the brain working, they recommended chewing "Garry Gum." However, one side effect of chewing it was violent diarrhea, so they also recommended chewing, afterward, "ANTI-Garry gum."

Instead of adding another program to keep you from using others, why not just turn the damn thing off for a while?