Could you give up technology for a day? What would you learn about yourself and the world if you did?

Dan Rollman of the National Day of Unplugging.

Today is the fourth annual National Day of Unplugging, encouraging people to go without technology for a day, and we are pleased to be joined this week by Dan Rollman, a tech industry veteran one of the creators of the movement, as our guest on the GeekWire radio show. He talks with us via phone to explain why the issue is important to him, how people have responded to it, and how the experience can change perspectives.

“I’m as much of an Internet junkie, and I’m online as much as anybody. It’s not meant to be an anti-technology project,” he explains. “There’s obviously a million extraordinary things that technology brings us. It’s just an opportunity to take a pause, and reflect, and also have an interesting dialogue about the role of technology in our lives today, and what that means.”

Rollman’s case was so persuasive that my colleague and co-host John Cook decided to take him up on it and is currently attempting to participate in the National Day of Unplugging. We’ll see how that goes.

That discussion with Rollman begins at the 8:00 minute mark, following our weekly news roundup. Topics this week include Groupon CEO Andrew Mason’s fantastic farewell letter following his firing, the cosmetics technology startup, Julep, that just landed a whopping $10 million in venture capital; and the Seattle Police Department’s new Predictive Policing initiative, which reminds us of Minority Report.

App of the Week: 123D Creature from Autodesk.

Name That Tech Tune: The answer to last week’s challenge.

Listen to the show above or access it directly via this MP3 file.

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