And I will begin this by saying, I'm a fairly smart and technically savvy young person, but I have no idea what the fuck Twitter is, how you use it, or why anyone would get excited about it. I had to check it out because we were thinking of expanding tech support into Twitter. As far as I can tell, its just a long, free form version of chat mixed with a message board. But unlike a blog, it doesn't force you to find the best way to say something that interests you, it's designed for pointless, immediate, random thoughts. That might be interesting if they were at least funny, but usually its just a bunch of jackasses saying "God, I'm so sick of
Blogs I get. A blog is for something you cannot express conversationally. For example, I couldn't go into a rant like this in person because at some point, I'd have to pretend to care what someone other than myself thinks. It would screw up my flow, and before I know it, someone would be telling me about a dream they had last night and by then my conversational intentions are squashed.
Another nice thing about blogs is that I can spend some time gathering my thoughts and how to best articulate them. I can invite others to join in and they can read at their leisure. They can scan my archives and skip the parts about comic books if they don't give a crap. I can import pictures and videos to help illustrate my point. I can add links to smarter or more reputable people than myself; or I can send you links to show you how stupid people can be in their own words. And YOU get to choose how much you want to listen to.
Video blogs would be better if the people on them weren't so inane. If it were a round table discussion from smart people (I don't care if they have credentials so much as if they are smart and honest), that would be fantastic, but most of them are either off the cuff rants from someone staring at their computer camera about how someone who thinks something different is a fucktard. Then someone even stupider comes along to trash that guy and we are all witness to the Clash of the Morons (see YouTube).
Interestingly, I think podcasts are generally better than video blogs... partly because you don't see some jackass leaning into his tiny camera for a fish-eye lens perspective, but even more because the person producing the podcast only has to be concerned with how something sounds and so they don't need a "hot chick" or quickly flashing graphics to make it more interesting.
As for chat, I think chat is one of the best things that ever happened to dating. Instead of calling a girl up after getting her contact information and trying to sound interested but not too interested, you can casually bullshit with someone in an informal setting without interuption and no need for an excuse to leave if it turns out that they bug the crap out of you. And if you have a blog, video blog, podcast, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, DeviantArt, or whatever, you can send to them and they will get a far better idea of who you are. (Disclaimer: This should not be taken as an endorsement of Facebook or Myspace which I regard as a nebulous blackhole of self-reference.)
Getting back on track (as if I had a track to begin with), technophilia is out of control. As soon as we invent a machine you can fuck and have a dialog with, society will be screwed... at least until we realize that we can fuck and converse with people and always could, we were just too fucking uptight and obsessed with progress to do it.
I have a theory that I call the Afraid of Independent Thought theory. This theory says that when we lack external forms of stimulation, our brain functions in a different way. If you've ever just stared up at the sky on a cloudy day or a starry night (if people still do that), you know that this is true. I often encourage people to meditate, not because I think they will have some spiritual revelation, but just so they can stop thinking about external things and focus on their own mind.
But people don't want to do that because when you are forced to face your thoughts, all of those bad thoughts and insecurities come to you; all of those nihilistic thoughts about a purposeless universe or maybe all sorts of thoughts about inadequacy... so you hide from them. You get on your cell phone and talk about nothing. I used to enjoy watching a college class get out and the amount of people who are on their cell phones before they even get out of the fucking door!
Not that long ago, when you went to the movie theater, you listened to music before the show and you could spend that time talking to your friends. Eventually, they came up with trivia games before the movie, but still, this was something you could ignore. Now they have loud, obnoxious commercials making it difficult (if not impossible) to talk to your friends and all around you people are talking to someone on their cell phone about nothing. And throughout the movie, you can see the blinking lights of text message screens as people need multiple means of distraction at the same time.
(Here's an idea: Instead of telling people to turn off their cell phones, how about you insulate the theater from radio waves? If you started advertizing "Zero Reception" movie theaters, I'd be more inclined to go.)
And I'm no poster child for the simple life. I have a big screen TV, laptop, Wii, high speed internet, DVR, scanner, and I try to use as many of them at the same time as possible. But at least I recognize that it is abusive, unhealthy behavior. Like the Buddhists say, it's not the object, but our attachment to it which is unhealthy. It is not the "what" but the "why" that matters.
Spend fifteen minutes just sitting somewhere. I beg you. Don't do anything. Don't watch a show, don't play a game, don't have a conversation... You can twiddle your thumbs if you want to, but anything more complex than that is out. You might feel anxious. You might be disappointed that you aren't having any profound thoughts, but I promise you will learn something about yourself when you force yourself to do nothing for just a few minutes. And I don't mean nothing like I did yesterday sitting on my ass watching TV. I mean actual nothing.
Seriously. Don't just think about it. Try it. If you have too many people around to distract you, just tell them to give you fifteen uninterrupted minutes to yourself. Or do it with them. Don't talk or make funny faces at eachother. Turn your backs to one another if it helps, just stop and think for fifteen minutes straight. And if you find any value in this, maybe do it once a week. How about Sunday nights?
I honestly think that the world would be a much better place if people would just stop for fifteen minutes each week and think. They might start to break that addiction they have to constant stimulus which is preventing them from all but the minimal possible amount of introspection. They might even start to realize that all of these shiny new things are just new ways of ignoring old problems.
2 comments:
When you start an entry with, "Sit your ass down and prepare for a rant or get the fuck out of the way", I know I'm in for something good. :)
As we ascend the parlous heights of the late 20s, I've begun to notice the generation gap between us and the chattering youngsters who've embraced Twitter et al. enthusiastically. Is premature geezerhood a symptom of the incredibly rapid rate of superficial technical change we've experienced in our lifetime?
"Superficial" is an important term here, I think. Because you'll hear braying that Web 2.0 is FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING OUR VERY LIVES. Of course it isn't. Don't be absurd. Access to SMS and tweets is merely an accelerated email and AOL chatroom, which is in turn merely an accelerated BBS and ... email again. And it's all essentially just plain old letter-writing and talking, facilitated by the wonder of the conductor and electron. Whoop de shit!
It's ironic that many of us nerds are noticing this, though. Shit, I was crossing my eyes to ogle ASCII boobs slowly downloaded from a BBS on my 8 MHz IBM PS/2 - I'm no Luddite. But I let my pre-paid cell phone lapse and Twitter is a stupefying annoyance more than anything else to me. Perhaps we're relative misanthropes. Perhaps we're over-educated. But when I take a walk late at night to watch the unbelievable silent beauty of clouds heaped on the horizon, glowing silver in the cast-off light of the moon, or stroll down to the beach to watch the waves crumble against the sand in steady inexorable rhythm, I think I know what you mean about the 15 minutes of nothing. Technology's advance has far outpaced evolution's, and we too often forget that we're just particularly smart apes who sometimes need to stop and smell the ripe fruit.
Post a Comment