Issue: Is Unplugging from Internet Really, Utterly That Hard to Do?

Shelley Emling, editor of Huff/Post 50, made a startling discovery when she returned from a Kenyan vacation: The world didn’t end. 

She went 11 days without email or use of her cell phone and “absolutely, positively nothing” happened.

“What would happen if I couldn’t check email? Would I be factored out of important decision-making at work? Would my colleagues despise me? Would my friends assume I was dead?” Emling wrote. “The truth is that none of those things happened. When I returned to work on Tuesday, July 23, I found my site … to be humming along quietly like a well-oiled machine. My friends were fine.”

On the other hand, she didn’t know about Glee star Cory Monteith until days after his death and didn’t hear the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case or even find out about the birth of the royal baby until after the fact.

Is unplugging for that long so rare that it’s remarkable?  Or is a generation of technogeeks taking over the culture—and making it seem that our gear is grafted onto our bodies?  Share your thoughts in the comments.