cigarettes as a threat and wants them put in the same category as normal cigarettes if they were their sewell and use would be subjected to the same restrictions as tobacco product. reminder that you can always keep up to date by logging on to our website aljazerra.com. ♪ ♪ you're in the stream. has the enter brought us closer to owing or pushed us farther apart? it's one of the most defining cultural questions of the past decade. one family took a year to put it to the test deciding to live like it was 1986. rotary mphones and paper maps and all. what they learned from forfeiting it. the growing number of households choosing to go off the grid. how some hide their personal information trails from the internet and why it's a lot

harder than you might think. my co-host is here and he's bringing in all of your feedback throughout the conversation. you know, a lot of people go off the grid or pull back from technology for environmental reasons for political reasons, but when you start realizing how easily we are all tracked, there's sort of a personal protection reason you want to do it, too. >> our line producer asked for today's show to go off the grid. i lasted 13 minutes without my smartphone. i tried a second time and lasted eight minutes. for today's show i went back to 1984, letterman jacket and i'm channeling tom cruise from "all the right moves," and whoever recognizes that, two points.

amanda on facebook says life in hell basically. we managed just fine ten years ago without smartphones and now maybe two days. if you last two days, most impressive. she says this is less about cell phones and internet and more about being responsible. i would love to take stewardship of a piece of land and my own life. i plus one that, lisa. >> so do i. it's no secret living in the digital age has revolutionized how we live, love, interact and process information, but at what cost? as we're dependent on smartphones and tablets more ask if it's to the detriment of family lives, social skills and intelligence. a spoken word video by gary turk went viral with more than 38 million views urging the online generation to look up for often. >> took a step back and opened my eye s. when we open our computers and

it's our doors we shut. all this technology we have is just an illusion. community, companion, a sense of inclusion. yet, when you step away from this device of delusion, you confusion. >> pretty soon we may not need to look down anymore. a recent pew report predicted by 2025 we will be one with the internet. in fact, one of the report's contributors said we won't think about going online or looking on the internet for something. we'll just be online and just look. it also said that will fundamentally change what it means to be social. >> matt's pizza at the next corner. >> how do we embrace rapidly changing technology without losing the things that create the complex, emotional human experience? could reaching back to simpler times for some things be the answer? today we're joined by a great line-up of guests who unplugged in order to recharge. on set josh

ua fields co-founder of minimalist and author of the memoir "everything that remains." he frequently goes for days without using the internet. to toronto, canada, they and their children just completed a year of living without modern technology as if it were the year 1986. thanks to all of you for being here. blair, you and morgan are raising two young kids, and one day your 5-year-old son passes up playing outside on a beautiful day and instead opts to be in the house on his tablet. that really got you thinking? >> yeah. it started to make me think about how different life was when i was a kid when you didn't have all these modern gadgets kind of in your face. >> so how did you approach morgan with this? when you did, was she open to the idea of living like it was 1986 for a year? what did he do? let's pretend it's 25 years ago?

>> ironically, she was on a business trip, and i sent her a text message and all i told her was, i thought of an idea that would be good for the family, but it's going to involve you putting away the ipad. she just came back with, what? no way. i'm not really feeling that, but i'll listen to it. now we got a it here. >> what convinced you to do it, and what was the adjustment like more than 25 years in time essentially? >> i guess it shows that i love him since i did it. when he first told me, i thought he was crazy. i wasn't quite sure about it, but i would support him and what he wanted to do. when i thought about it, i said, we're not going to lose out on this. we'll win either way, and that we would do it. in the beginning i was a little stressed going up to it and just knowing how much stuff i had to get rid of. i was just up for it, but once we got the hang of it, it was all right.

>> what did it do for your family and kids after you got over the initial shock? >> well, when we started the project, we moved into a house that basically mirrored the '80s and we wanted our house to be like the house i was raised in with your dinner table, no technology on the main floor, just you had your tv room in the basement sort of deal. i think it forced our sons to play together a lot more. they weren't distracted as much. it also helped me and morgan just help them out and be with them even more because we weren't distracted with our phones and little things like that. >> lisa, before the show we were talking about how our job sometimes we get so inundated with technology it takes away from the human interaction. our community echoes that. definitely this enhances the quality of the connection while lowering the quantity. he's talking about going off the grid, off

technology. it takes skills to tweet and post. that doesn't equate to interpersonability. good human-to-human connection enhances tweeting and social media. joshua, you don't have a mullet and look like a young christopher walken from the late 1970s. social mediatech nolg is a tool at the end of the day. most of us can live without it. how can we use it responsibly without disconnecting from the present moment and people? >> i think it's important you talk about responsibility, because i think with great power comes great responsibility. so figuring out how we can use these things more deliberately. it's like a chain saw. you can use it to cut down the tree about to fall on your house, or you can use it to hack somebody up, chain saw massacre style. it's all about how you use the technology. whether or not it adds value to your life or whether or not it's adding to the noise. i have gone long periods of time

by removing things as a minimalist. i tonight think it's about deprivation, but stiles -- sometimes i do experiments to remove technology from my life to see how to bring it back in to use it in a more intentional way. >> we see videos like look up. 38 million views. do you think people even today in 2014 feel conflicted about the role of technology in their life? >> i think so. i think we're in a bit of a transition as you mentioned at the beginning of the show. we talk about how eventually we're going to transition over to where we're online as part of our life. right now we're in this moment where we're going from the way things were in 1986 to the way things are now. the question isn't should we live without technology? the question is, how can we use it more deliberately? i'll give you an example. i went for a couple of months and got rid of my smartphone altogether. you learn how few pay phones there are these days. i had no phone at home

whatsoever, but i learned a lot about myself for those two months. i learned that the smartphone was a great tool, but i could use it differently. i no longer needed facebook on the smartphone or e-mail on the phone anymore. there were great tools i used before i had music and gps on it. i have twitter on it because i enjoy a quick tweet every now and then. how does it add value to your life? the cool thing about technology is it's different for each one of us. if something adds value to my well. >> blair, how is your year long experience changed how you and morgan and your entire family view modern technology? >> yeah. i can say that i agree with what joshua just said. he touched on it great. you just want to decide how you want to use it. right now we're in that stage he's talking about, deciding what we want to use and what we don't want to use. ultimately it's allowing us to use our tools better we can say. >> even though your experiment

ends, you have chosen not to just all at one go back to all the technology? you're slowly integrating what you need? >> no. yeah, for us basically right now the internet is a treat. we don't have the internet at our house yet. we've been over to my brother-in-law's and my parents' house and used the internet, and that's how we get our twitter account. we just haven't picked it up yet. we're still behind and stuck in the '80s. look at the hair. >> we love the hair. thanks to you for being on the show. up next, life completely off the grid. a fascinating couple from hawaii has lived independently of the power grid for more than 20 years in a homeworking entirely off solar energy. we talked them into getting back on the grid for just an hour to tell us why they did it. a bit later, hiding from companies who make billions collecting data about you. is it possible to stay in the shadows? we'll see you in two minutes.

as a communications professional, i cannot live off the grid, nor would i want to. my interactions on social media help me network for my career, but i can understand the allure of a tech-free lifestyle. teaching kids away from digital distractions are strengthen family bonds. >> welcome back. we're discussing how people disconnect from technology. they have lived off the grid for 20 years and believe

disconnecting made their family even more connected. from white salmon, washington we have michelle nyehouse a science journalist that stopped living off the grid after 15 years of doing so. she says this lifestyle has a ladder to live more comfortably. thanks for joining us. no baby steps for you guys. you went all-out. what motivated you to go off the grid? >> well, what we really wanted to do was live in a way that was earth-friendly. because of that, we decided to find a way to generate our own electricity and to grow food and to create housing in a way so that if everyone on the -- if the population of the planet lived in similar ways, that the planet would benefit and not be polluted and hurt. we did it in a process. we aren't total -- in a sense we're off the grid, but the idea

is that when disconnected, we decided to go for complete connection. so we're on the internet. we are -- we have electricity. we have washing machines and satellite tv. the difference for us is that we brought the grid and integrated it with nature and with the natural light with growing food and being in nature. >> so, michelle, you know there are two kinds of living off the grid. the kind that they do when they're integrated into society but for environmental reason and political reasons they do it on their own. there's the other kind where you move to a commune and are isolated and off the grid. the latter is what you chose. halves -- what was that like for you? >> well, we were disconnected in a sense in that we were living

in a geographically isolated place. we were 70 miles from the closest small regional airport, probably 100 miles from a starbucks. >> that would kill me. >> we were connected with our neighbors, and we rend we were d with the people in the small town that we lived near close to. we were completely off the grid in the sense that all of our power was produced by solar panels. sill l similarly, we still have internet and i could work as a journalist remotely and i traveled. we had creature converts. people were surprised to find out we had hot water and i can run my laptop and all the things. there were small things we didn't have like a toaster or drier that used a lot of power. >> why did you revert back to a more traditional way of living? >> it wasn't really that we were uncomfortable living off the grid.

it was that where we had bought land, where we could afford to buy land in an isolated place was disconnected from a larger community. as i have a 5-year-old daughter and as she got older, it was just clear that she would be much happier being within walking distance of her friends, things like that. so we had tried to create our own community, and in the end we found that we needed to plug into that larger community. >> michelle, so many of our community members want to live the life that you are living. scott says, what do you miss most about life without so much technology? he saysvy subtly peacefulness. all caps letter. he's trying to live like you guys. it's getting there. i have rooftop solar, but it's tough to be 100% off the grid. spencer says i've deleted facebook three separate times and instagram twice. this is my second twitter account. it's addicting and feels like you miss out.

i want to get in the conversation. look, i'm not crunchy like lisa. i'm soft and chewy like peanut butter. if there was a horror movie and all the electricity went out, i would die in the opening credits. how do you guide a guy like me to be like you? what are some practical steps? >> i think you have to integrate. i think you have to see how you can bring whatever the balance that you're missing back into your life, and you have to do it in baby steps because humans don't like to change quickly. we're like dinosaur, it takes a while for the message to get in our brain. the rising waters force this new way of life into our collective awareness, and the internet is helping us to do that as well. it's an incredibly valuable tool, but you're right. you can get trapped in it. so my suggestion to look for

balance in your life. whatever it takes to balance it, and try to stay there. a balance is i will losive, so you're going to jump in and out and try things like the minimalist, try to restrict certain things to see how that feels. then rebalance. it's all about taking responsibility personally and collectively to integrate and to become more balanced. >> so, joshua you lived off the grid for four months in a cabin in montana. >> i moved into a cabin in the middle of nowhere on the side of the mountain. there was one traffic light in 3700 square miles. i was inspired, and seeing that i compare that to turning down the volume all the way. getting out into the middle of nowhere allowed me to figure out what was important in any life. as i reintegrated -- it was a temporary experience. you can do it for a summer or

month or a week even. it was four months in a cabin. i wrote the most recent book that i wrote there. i found that unplugging allowed me to turn the turn the volume all the way down so i can turn it back up as i reintegrated myself into the real world. >> how do you embrace rapidly changing technology without losing these things that make us human, those complex emotional relationships? >> the comment was spot-on. you feel like you always miss out. here's the key. you're always going to miss out. no matter what you do, you miss out on 99.9% of everything that's going on in the world. you have to be able to accept that and figure out what are the things that actually add value to your life. if it's twitter, that's great. if it's television, that's great. if it's living in the middle of nowhere and focusing on a small community, that's great, too. it's about you individually and what adds value to your life. >> thanks to our guests. so, we've talked about how living off the grid helps to

preserve the environment and wallet and state of mind, but what about your privacy? up next meet founder of a search engine that doesn't track your every move like google and others. we'll see you in two minutes. , e

perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america.

welcome back. we're discussing contemporary ways individuals opt out of the mod drn technology, and we turn to how some concerned citizens respond to online personal data collection. out of san francisco is nico sell co-founder of wicker. that's an app that self-destructing your text, pictures and video from your phone for you. on skype from valley forge, pennsylvania gabriel weinberg, founder and ceo of duck duck go. thanks for being here, both of you. nico, why are you wearing sunglasses? >> so far there's no pictures of my eyes on google. i'm trying to keep it that way as long as possible. >> is there something about the eyes that allows you to be more identifying than the rest of your features? >> it's just trying to decrease your digital footprint in any way you can. that's one of the ways i've been successful so far.

so i try to keep it going. >> how did you being so hyperconscious of online privacy issues? >> i had the honor to spend the last 15 years being educated by the best hackers in the world. i've been helping organized defcon, and they've taught me that the nsa and what we deal with snowden is the tip of iceberg. surveillance has gone mainstream. i teach kids how to drop on the cell phone calls and look at text messages and turn on your interfacing camera on your smartphone or laptop or smart tv. people do these things very easily today, and i don't think most people realize it's going on. >> gabriel, nico mentioned the nsa. your website traffic actually had an enormous jump after revelations that the nsa was tracking americans' person data. why did we see this level of response from the public? >> you know, we always knew that

people didn't want to be tracked. they don't know really what to do about it. now we see, you know, you and other people highlighting the alternative. things that you can switch to to reduce your digital footprint. when people kind of understand they can do that, a lot of people really do make the switch. >> they have both mentioned digital foont print. we asked the community, is it possible to have zero digit footprint in today's digital answers? collecting answers from those off the grid will send via pigeon post. anything i do online virtually i just assume it is in the public realm. nico, is it possible to have a zero digital footprint? speaking about facebook, even if i'm not tagged somewhere, someone else tagged me and four square people check me in, i can't control other people's behavior. should we try to achieve zero digital footprint or should it

be minimal? >> everyone on the show today has a digital footprint of sorts, even if you're off the grid you use the internet to get food. so it's not really about having zero digital footprint and believing big brother telling you that resistance is futile. it's about being aware and controlling your digital footprint in all the ways that you choose that work for your life style. i personally choose to boycott facebook and don't use social networks because if you read their privacy policies, facebook, twitter, snap chat, skype, on all of those services, you have to give up a free transferrable worldwide license for eternity to that company for anything you input into the service. >> what does that mean? >> it means that a privacy policy should be called an ownership policy. >> what search engines do you use? i'm just curious.

>> i use google search engine and assume that everything on there is being tracked. one of the things i do there is feed it a lot of misinformation. i also use google maps because i don't see another way that works well for my lifestyle. so i'm aware of those two. i also use black bow on super privacy search when i do health searches because health searches especially are extremely valuable. there's thousands of lists sold by data brokers all the time with lists of rape victims, erectile sufferers and these data brokers collect every can about you from search engines and social sites and all the different things you do out there. >> gabriel you started a search engine called duck duck go. how is it different from the other ones nico just referred? >> at duck duck go we are anonymous in the sense that we don't store

any personal information. so our privacy policy is very strict in that regard. we also focus on an overall better search experience. when you go out and search just generally a site that has the answer, we made it our job through our community to pair searchers with the right answer and put those above the links in realtime for you. >> in europe they basically allowed people to purge their digital history, so we asked the community, should they be allowed to purge the digital history? it shouldn't replace cautious usage, but they should be able to expunge the online past. do you think that they should be able to do that, and is it do-able in this day and age? >> i agree with nico that it's not a black or white thing. try to reduce your footprint when possible if it's easy for you, what's nice is there are

simple things you can do that really gets you a lot of way there without much sacrifice. using duck duck go or a private search engine is one of those things. you can also install if you add onto your browser that, you know, you stay on encrypted places a little more. it sounds complicated, but they're not at this point. they're two downloads. once you do that your footprint is reduced a ton. i'm sure everyone here has noticed ads around the internet. that's a result of tracking and that is, a, annoying, and b, leads to higher charges around the internet. that can be reduced by a few simple measures. >> good advice from both of you. thank you to all of our guests. until next time, raj and i will

america, these are thera stories for you. congress keeping up the pressure as it investigates alleged failure business veterans administration. and our government spy sharing too much information on a popular social media site?