Digressions and Other Inconsistencies

Has anybody stopped and pondered just how much information is available to us and how easy it is to get? Think about it. I can get lost browsing blogs about bikes, prefab housing, or computers. I can sit in a stall at a public bathroom and order stuff on eBay. I can watch an NBA game anywhere I want, inside or out, instantly. I can browse videos, music, books, and download them from anywhere. I can find reviews of restaurants across the country, look at pictures of the their food, check out an image of the parking lot, plot step by step driving directions, email them to my phone, and have it lead me the entire way.

The information available at our fingertips is staggering, unprecedented and omnipresent. This realization hit me when, one recent morning, after I had already checked email on my iPhone while I was biking to work, I sat down at my desk, opened my browser, and began reading news feeds of everything from politics to technology to humor. Within five minutes, I found myself reading an article about the movie “Back to the Future” on Wikipedia, and I don’t even know how I got there.

Don’t worry. I got off the bike to check my email.

I used to proudly tell my friends when they came in to our house and ask where the TV was, that my wife and I didn’t own one. The unsaid portion was, “We don’t need one of those things entertaining us and telling us what to think. We can find other ways to occupy our time.” I seriously used to believe that. I don’t now.

I have a hard drive full of movies and TV shows that I bought over the internet. YouTube could keep me busy watching endless videos day and night. Facebook is there, my news feeds are always waiting, and Hulu’s come along as of late to let me catch up on the episodes of “30 Rock” I might have missed – then check out Family Guy, the Tonight Show, The Office… The reality is, we still have “TV” – it just sits on our desk, and has a keyboard instead of a channel selector. In many ways, this new TV is far worse than the old one – it’s far more pervasive than the original TV ever was.

So, thus far, my point is: we have lots of information. And everybody reading this said, “Wow, good call. We didn’t realize that as we sat reading this via the internet.” Fair enough. But really, that’s not my entire point. My second point is, sometime this week, I realized that simply standing in front of this fire hose of information and consuming it can’t continue. I’m not sure how it’s affected us as a whole, but I can certainly tell you how it’s affected me, and how much more I’ve been affected than I ever would have anticipated.

I don’t do the “creative” things that gave me so much satisfaction nearly as much as I used to, from writing to composing to blogging. Those activities require way too much mental effort to get the same reward as simply browsing email, FailBlog, or Facebook. I don’t “think” about what I do as much anymore, either. It’s just a habit now that, when I get home, I go to the computer, or whip out my iPhone, and “check in”. There was a time when I’d get home and practice an instrument, or sit and talk with my wife, or even read a physical book that I had to hold and manually turn pages. I’m not as productive as I used to be. It’s harder for me to think in terms of “long form” activities, like creating an entire website that takes weeks or months; or editing an entire blog post which requires an introduction, a set of points, and a closing which ties it all together; or even composing a simple piece of music. The mental energy and the time commitment for these projects is too great for me, these days. Maybe I had these attention issues before, but only now with this constant “information saturation”, are they really being exposed. At this point, it doesn’t really matter. I’m tired of this drain on my time, my energy, and my attention.

What do we do about this? Do we accept this as just the way things are, now, and that so much of our lives is just meant to be spent virtually, and online? Do we exchange all of our technology for books, a pen and some paper?

I’ll be honest with you. I talked with my wife about going cold turkey – disconnecting our internet service, getting rid of all of our movies and TV shows, and keeping just one of our laptops around. If we wanted to check email or catch up on anything that required the internet, we could go to a coffee shop, or something. Part of me thinks that we would find ourselves surrounded with tons of forgotten time and opportunity, and that we may not miss all that technological stuff all that much.

Now, I’ll be honest with myself. Cold turkey may be great for a while, but it probably wouldn’t last all that long. It wouldn’t be too long before I was wishing I could watch just this one show, or if I just had an internet connection to do just this one thing, and before you know it, I’d be back to the gadget filled, internet and information drenched lifestyle I’d sworn off so recently. I think, in the end, it’s okay to say that the internet is, indeed, an amazing technology, and we are lucky to be have access to such an unparalleled amount of information, but here’s the kicker:

We aren’t obligated to use it all the time.

Does that sound stupid? Obvious? It does to me, too…now. It was a surprising revelation to me, though. Just because I had email available to me didn’t mean I always had to know exactly what was my Inbox, or reply to somebody immediately. Just because my iPhone let me know there were new feeds to read didn’t mean I had to switch over post haste and enlighten myself with it. A random “what if” thought didn’t immediately have to be Googled, Wikipedia-ed, or otherwise tracked down on the web.

In short, we don’t have to stand in front of the fire hose and consume. Yes, it’s amazing how much comes out, but we’ll end up just getting soaked, and uncomfortable, and our shoes will get really squishy. We have the option of (carefully) standing next to the hose and sipping, or bringing little cups to the hose to drink in small portions later, or – get this – to step away from the fire hose altogether from time to time.

The “small portions” is the part that’s going to take me some time to learn as far as disciplining myself. Saying that I’m going to only partake sometimes and doing it are two different things. Having the internet on all the time has become such a habit for me that I’m going to have to practice purposefully limiting it or stepping away from it, as methodically and carefully as I sit down to practice tough passages on my bassoon. I think a good place to start is to have a few ideas in mind at the beginning of each day:

1. Only check email two to three times a day.
2. Only check my news feeds two to three times a day.
3. Avoid the “Back to the Future Syndrome”. Have a specific reason to open up a browser. If I’m going to pay bills, fine. If I’m going to research reed tools, or dolphin eating habits, great. But I’m not going to get on with the idea that I’ll just mindlessly browse, and find something.
4. Establish times throughout the day where the internet is considered “turned off”, maybe for a half hour to an hour to start. I’m betting that, at least after the withdrawal, I’ll be amazed at the time I have back and my ability to concentrate on more “long form” ideas.

Those are my ideas. I can’t guarantee any of those will work, or that I’ll stick to any of them, but I’ll try. Maybe I’ll check back in once in a while to let you know how it’s going.

How about you guys? Does anybody else have this problem? What do you do to keep from being overwhelmed? Let me know!