Over the so-called holidays, I read countless (I can’t count) articles about Freedom, the cinch-to-use productivity software that disables your Mac or PC networking, i.e. internet connection, for up to eight bliss-y hours. During that time, you can write, think, feel, breathe, and wonder what your cat would say if s/he could talk. “But I want to watch the new Youth Lagoon videowwww,” probably.
I myself have not tried Freedom, for two reasons. One, the bosses here at this fine publication, which happens to rely on the internet and my access to it for things like “posting stories,” would probably not be impressed. “You can just go ahead and make that Freedom permanent meowwww,” they would say. (They talk a lot like cats.) Two, I am waiting for Freedom 2.0.
You haven’t heard? Freedom has done very well, if New York Times mentions are any indication, and is used by writers and thinkers all over the place. Unfortunately, it has proved to be a surprisingly less-than-perfect means of achieving its promised end. Users of Freedom have found that – even while they are mercifully blocked from the web and all its entanglements, black holes, and Twitter beefs – they are not as free as they would like. Other distractions surface. The phone still rings and buzzes and flashes, for one. For another, you have always wanted to organize your magazines by how attractive you find the cover subject, in descending order. Consider your toenails: when was the last time you painted each one of them in a different chroma of chartreuse? Then there’s a large, opened bag of Mini Eggs on the bathroom counter. There is probably something on the OWN Network right now. Or a new mini-series on Netflix. You feel like there might be something in the fridge you didn’t see when you last opened it, ten minutes ago. Maybe you’ll make a cleansing smoothie. There’s a grey sweatshirt you’ve really been missing; you should try to find it. The cat proves to be very talkative. Ooh, look. It’s cloudy again.
That’s why Fred Stutzman, the researcher and developer behind Freedom, is collaborating with Apple to create Freedom 2.0. Already buzzed about in high-IQ tech circles as a productivity-exploding tool that takes human liberty to unprecedented new levels, Freedom 2.0 works with the Apple 4S to remove, one by one, each of the distractions preventing us from reaching the success we could so surely attain.
It’s brainless, really. You simply open Siri, begin a sentence with “Give me Freedom from…” and finish it with whatever you need not to do right now. “From the fridge,” you could say, and the stick-on Freedom sensor you’ve installed in your fridge would create a medium-voltage (i.e., pretty ouchy) electric field around the handle, lasting up to eight hours. “From the cat,” you could say, and the Freedom sensor on your cat would inject it with a tranquilizer, also lasting up to eight hours. “From the phone,” you’d say, and Siri would shut down all non-Siri operations on your phone. “From the balcony,” you’d say, and you get the idea. Balcony door shuts. No more cigarette breaks. No more concentration-breaking weather.
Stutzman says he and his team are still working out some difficulties (how to make your nailpolish collection hide itself, for instance), but by mid-2013, we will be able to use the Freedom software to control everything that distracts us; that impedes our productivity; that hinders us from world domination. Everything, that is, except ourselves.
This article is not true, in the factual sense. There is no Freedom 2.0. There is probably no freedom.
Sarah Nicole Prickett is the Style Editor at Toronto Standard. Complain to her about her sense of humour/worldview at @xoxSNP.
