Our Over-Connected World, 7-26-2010

 Back to The New York Times and a Bob Herbert column from July 17, 2010: Tweet Less, Kiss More. It raised a point I have made about myself and the world.

This is all poart of what I think is one of the weider aspeacts of our culture, a heightened frenetricism that seems to demand we be doing at a minimum tow or three things every single moment of every hour that we're awake. Why is multitasking considered an admirable talent? We could just as easily think of it aas a neurotic inabiliuty to concentrate for more than three seconds.

 I believe you will find previous notes where I speak of me overloading my brain with too time online:  much research, too much tweeting, too many blogging deadlines, too much email. My goal was competing in the modern marketplace. I did give up on the cell phone, only because I kept losing the silly thing.

I do not think I am a Luddite, but I am convinced I handled it all wrong. I wore myself out. Frenetic is a good word, capturing how my brain felt. Again, from Mr. Herbert:

Let's put down some of these gadgets and spend a little time just being ourselves. One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency amid all the craziness that surrounds us to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs - those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace thosea round us.

I still feel twinges at the need to get work done. No money meant no food (and it did mean exactly that at the start of this year), and the computer made me money.

I wonder if with multitasking, I did not achieve what meth does for other workers; getting more done in a finite amount of time. Which makes me puzzle over this question: does our tech addiction indicate something wrong with our economic life? Do people know instinctively they are in far more desperate straits than appears on the surface?

sch

[I do not what to make of this omen except to think it still describes our world – Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall came on midway through my typing. Watching the people on the bus, people walking into a grocery store this afternoon, people during work breaks, people while they're working, with their noses buried in their phones keeps this one still relevant. I have learned not to get anxious about not cleaning out my email. Also, learned: a ruthless use of the delete key. I also do not have over 1500 emails coming to me on a daily basis. This one reawakened memories of my brain rushing faster and faster hither and yon, feeling like I was tearing myself apart, feeling like a hamster on a wheel going 120 mph. Do not think I cannot distract myself with Wikipedia and email when I am supposed to be doing some writing, that however comes from an older cause – procrastination. E worried about being in Muncie for the crackheads, CC worries that something might get triggered into that will get me running with those same people, the government worries about sex. I worry about getting sucked into the internet, to try finding its end, compelled to see something new, to get back on that hamster's wheel. See, the drugs and sex have served their purpose, I still have stories to write and things to read and for them the internet retains a purpose. I keep an eye on overdoing anything online, off getting away from the Internet. I need to get my posts on here. I need to find places for my stories. I keep an eye on the amount of time spent here. I had enough of being on that hamster's wheel. I suggest you take a break, too. sch 2/17/2023.]