White Plains and Valhalla region

Starting at dinner time on Sunday, your television is gone. The Internet was never invented and you will lose your cellphone, PDA, pager and laptop. Well, at least for 10 days.

Eric Yaverbaum of Larchmont and Mark DiMassimo of Rye are encouraging fathers to turn off all electronic devices as part of their OFFLINING campaign. Professional marketers by trade, the two have become disenchanted with the world marketing has wrought — entire families spending more time glued to iPhones, Blackberries, the Internet and television than with each other.

Their solution: Between Father’s Day and Thanksgiving, pledge to have 10 No-Device Dinners with family. String the days together or space them apart over the coming months, but the goal is for fathers, mothers, sons and daughters to spend more time communicating without distraction, DiMassimo said. Thanksgiving would be a No-Device Day.

“As long-time marketing professionals, my partner, Eric Yaverbaum, and I have devoted much of the last two decades convincing people to click here, call now, shop online, log on, search, pay bills in your underwear, trade from the beach, and add “friends” to your digital network,” DiMassimo said. “I remembered what my father – a man who had designed integrated circuits, from the first speed dial to a giant particle accelerator, had said to me when I was a boy: ‘We invent technology to be our servant, not our master.’”

More information is available at http://www.OffliningInc.com and you can also sign the pledge at the website. Just be sure to do it before Sunday.