William Powers, author of the new book Hamlet’s Blackberry, is a journalist who lives and works on Cape Cod. He and his wife, both writers, are used to working at home.

Powers values his computer and the technology he uses. Like so many other writers, he relies on a panoply of electronic devices.

Some time ago, however, he and his wife realized that their communication technology, with all the possibilities it offered, was taking over their family life. Their young son was shortchanged in the process because his parents were less available to him than they wanted to be.

Powers and his wife resolved to break out of their fix by striking a blow for freedom: they decided to unplug their household modem at the end of each Friday afternoon, and not turn it on again until Monday morning.

At first, they found this practice painful. Powers describes it as akin to what he imagines a heroin addict undergoes when he breaks with his drug habit. However, after a few weeks the couple came to enjoy the new freedom brought to them by this change in their way of life.

They still valued their cyber-forest of devices but now felt free to control them rather than being controlled by them. Their home life took on a quality that they had wanted but had not known how to achieve.

The complete story, however, is more complex than this. That’s because Powers had entered upon a spiritual journey to find out how to achieve a better balance in his life. That journey took him back to some of the great thinkers and writers of the humanistic and philosophical tradition: Plato, Seneca, Shakespeare, Emerson, Thoreau, William James, and others.

Reading these writers and pondering their thoughts, Powers succeeded in crafting for himself a spiritual life that helped him put the world of technology in perspective. He now feels liberated from what he felt as an overload of information and an excess of connectedness.

For my part, I love the technology that occupies much of my work time and some of my leisure. My Macintosh lap-top computer; the digital voice-recorder that helps me interview people; the iPod that provides music for me; the digital camera that takes such fine photos; the scanner that helps me preserve printed material that otherwise clutters my office; and yes, the sparsely-used cell phone that occasionally puts me in touch with those I wish to talk to — all of these devices have found a place in my heart.

However, I do not feel wedded to these gizmos to the extent that so many other people in the modern world clearly are. I value the technology for what it can accomplish for me, but I don’t let it rule my life.

In speaking to William Powers recently, I credited my relative freedom to my classical education, a view that he enthusiastically endorsed.  During my years of schooling I had read most of the authors from whom Powers has derived such inspiration.

In addition, the spiritual life has been a vital part of my education. This discipline has taught me to keep things in their place and not allow them to dominate my thoughts and feelings. In addition to the authors Powers cites, I learned from many writers in my spiritual tradition. One of these is Thomas Merton, of whom Powers claims to be “a massive fan.”

Part of my spiritual inheritance has been valuing the Sabbath. To me this day of rest and relaxation rates as one of the great inventions of history. To have a time when we do not work seems to me precious, in part because time off helps preserve mental balance. I regret that for so many people, even one work-free day each week is an unaffordable luxury.

If you can afford not to work on at least one day of the week, you can deliver yourself from an unhealthy dependence on the things that exercise a stranglehold on many of us. Powers tells of standing at a crosswalk in New York and watching a half dozen or so people nearby. Of that group, he could find only one person who was not staring at a digital gadget.

The world of gadgetry that is so much with us not only deluges us with information but also exposes us to a kind of connectedness that can prove stifling. Though it can shrivel the soul to be alone too much of the time, it remains good to be by oneself some of the time. A constant diet of “friending” on Facebook can threaten the life within.

Powers speaks about “stopping places of the mind” that can preserve a balance in our inner life. With enthusiasm, I endorse this way of dealing with the digital technology that now looms so large in the daily life of many of us.