Last week I was in Berlin attending and speaking at the NEXT-Conference 2010. Other speakers included Stowe Boyd, Andrew Keen and Cindy Callop. I was in the track “openess” together with Steve Rubel.

Some of you may have watched the live-stream but I got some questions about the slides, so I put them up on Slideshare and wrote down a version of the transcript: .

It’s an honour to be here on behalf of the Virtual Happiness Institute. I have a short presentation. Gonna give you some updates on our research and then tell you how we can prevent the next epidemic. But first, I may not be the next Uri Geller, but I know what’s on your mind right now: “Why would we need an institute for Virtual Happiness? ”

And the answer is so obvious! Just like the government of Bhutan uses Gross National Happiness (instead of GPD) to measure the success of its policies, we –as an Internet community –should focus on our digital well-being more than ever! The Virtual Happiness Institute keeps track of this research in Internet psychology. Basically what we do is to write about anything that a blogger finds too boring and study everything that a scientist finds too much fun.

It’s all based on a simple research question: does the internet make us happy?

We asked people how they would rate their own happiness . And it turns out Western Europeans are moderately happy. They rate it a 7,11 on a 10 scale. In the American system this would have been a B right? But how would this live satisfaction change when they had to live without the Internet for a full month? And then you see their happiness drop straight to a 6.3.

After we published these results we got some complaints. People said: “Well this sounds nice, but there something wrong with your method. You can’t live without the internet, so that’s not an option.” So we designed a new experiment. We found someone (me) who was quite an internet fanatic (yep, that’s me) and we persuaded him to go unplugged for more than a month. Mind you. Until then this hadn’t been not done before. The experiment has had a lot of following , but until then this was the first time.

So, I went completely offline for a whole month. Nearly 40 days without the Internet, no Google, no Email, no surfing, no twitter, Nothing. The most fun thing I ever did, at least in the first week. During this period I kept a diary. (you all know what that is right? Sort of an offline weblog) And this was eventualy published as a book in Dutch with the title “how to survive your inbox”. Because my conclusion at that time was that living without the internet was awful, but living without email was fantastic.

(An apology to my podcast subscribers)

Dear listeners,
It’s been a while since I uploaded my last podcast episode. Therefore I’m happy to tell you that Klaas Weima invited me to do a show together… and as a result I have a new MP3 waiting for you!

Klaas is one of the few Dutch podcasters who puts in enormous effort to bring you interviews and insights on digital marketing and inspiring (business) people. (And we can’t thank him enough for that!)

In this interview Klaas asks me questions about TED, Virtual Happiness, Podcasting and Social Grazing. You can subscribe to his podcast here and you can look at the website of his company Energize (boosting brands).

Klaas, many thanks! And it’s my honour to pass on the stick to Mitch Joel

 

 Interview by Klaas Weima [29:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You may have received an “out-of-office” reply from my mailbox. Or you read some where that Jim will not be online for the rest of this year.

Why?
The reason that I’ve chosen to go offline is because of a research project that I’m involved in. We try to examine the relationship between internet usage and happiness. One of the questions that were raised was: Can you do without the internet in modern society?

How? can I be reached…
Just because I’m offline, it doesn’t mean that I’ve vanished from the planet. You can still call me (+31 6 55196630) or send me a nice hand written letter:

Jim Stolze
P.O. Box 201
3140 AE MAASSLUIS
The Netherlands

When? can we meet …

• Friday, 5th of December at Sanoma Uitgevers (Hoofddorp)
• Wednesday , 10th of December at Erasmus University (Rotterdam)
• Friday, 12th of December at IlseMedia (Amsterdam)
• Tuesday, 16th of December at Dauphine (Amsterda)

Feel free to SMS (text message) or to call my cell phone if you want to meet In Real Life on some other date or location.

What? is allowed and what not…
I can’t use any equipment that is connected to the internet. No google, no surfing, no email etcetera. My iPhone is going to be looked after by friends.

P.s. You are allowed to comment on this article, but I’ll probably read it next year.

Yes, it’s true: I am going offline.

I’m going to cut my digital lifeline: no surfing, no email, no google, no facebook and no Twitter.

Why? Well, it’s part of the research project “virtual happiness“. In that project we try to define the different forms of internet usage and how they are related to certain aspects of happiness. Does being online make you happier?

And… do you have a choice? Can you live without the internet in the modern world?

Exciting questions and I will be telling you more about this experiment before I go offline

Zoals je misschien via een aantal kanalen hebt vernomen, werk ik de komende maanden aan een nieuwe project. Het is een onderzoeksproject naar de effecten van internet op de kwaliteit van ons leven.

Dat klinkt misschien wat zweverig, maar volgens mij is dat een cruciale vraag. We besteden met elkaar steeds meer minuten online, zonder precies te weten wat daar de gevolgen van zijn.

Een kleine club (online evangelisten) prijst het digitale walhalla en een andere groep wijst juist op de nadelen. Tijd om daar eens wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar te doen!

Tijdens Picnic’08 mocht ik in de grote zaal mijn onderzoeksvraag presenteren:

Wil je meer weten over dit project? Vul de survey in of laat een bericht achter!

Voor mijn nieuwe project Virtual Happiness ben ik afgelopen maanden flink de boekenkast ingedoken. Standaardwerken als The Internet Galaxy van Manuel Castells aan de éne kant, maar ook boeken over happiness van onder meer Jonathan Haidt.

Terwijl ik volledig in de geest van het boek FLOW relaxed aan het lezen was, werd ik vastgelegd op de gevoelige plaat:

Dit boek van Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is een absolute aanrader als je meer wilt weten over flow.

Flow is dat moment waarop alles vanzelf lijkt te gaan, je denkt nauwelijks na en alles lijkt perfect.

Waarom kan het hele leven geen flow zijn? En hoe kan je dit toepassen op je eigen geluksbeleving of die van anderen? Vragen die in dit boek aan bod komen.