Distractions are really paper tigers. They have no power of their own. They need to be fed constantly, or else they die. If you refuse to feed them by your own fear, anger, and greed, they fade.
Mindfulness in Plain English (Venerable H. Gunaratana Mahathera)
I was without web access for about a week. This put me in a introspective mood and I made some observations and realizations. Not the most insightful of realizations I should warn, but maybe this post can help someone out there.
Since a big chunk of my daily routine is dedicated to browsing the web, I had to do other things to entertain myself. I had to is probably the wrong word. It was more I opted to because apart from chores, they were things I actually wanted to do. It wasn’t like I was forced to do them. This isn’t exactly about how the web has made me procrastinate, because it has done that too, but more about how social media makes you unaware of how it’s distracting you.
I didn’t actually accomplish life changing goals either, but what I did was finished doing something. I haven’t felt that sense of completion in a long time. Some were chores, but others we’re just entertaining activities like watching TV, reading books and magazines, and playing Brain Age. (My youngest score is 23 years old.) The difference, in contrast to the web, was that I accomplished the purpose.
Lets not fool ourselves. The web is mostly for entertainment. (Or, The Internet is for Porn) Everyone supposedly knows this, but pinpointing the distraction is actually harder than people are aware of.
When you read a book, watch tv, or consume other type of media, you do it for a purpose. Most of the time the purpose is to entertain yourself. But on the web, specially on so called social media like Twitter, the purpose is constantly being challenged and shifted. It’s a two way, or asynchronous conversation as it has been proselytized, but you still have to manage that expectation. To listen or to talk, to participate or to follow, to write or to read. This is theoretically great, but you will never have that sense of completion I was talking about. It’s an open loop that never closes in your head.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m quitting social media services like Twitter and Tumblr. I just can’t do it anymore. I realized that at best social media is entertainment disguised as “useful” information or crowdsourced “knowledge”, and at worst is distraction disguised as entertainment. The later being most of my experience with social networking sites, specially Twitter. See, when you watch Television to kill time and distract yourself because you’re bored, it is easier to realize it. Most TV junkies are aware that they are TV junkies. But the web is constantly shifting your attention and it makes it harder to realize that you’re distracting yourself.
There’s a relationship between entertainment and distraction, but you don’t have to be bored to be entertained. That makes sense? If you’re bored and watching TV for example, your option is channel surfing and you can only do that for so long. Online, you have a variety of options, but the “catch” is that it seems entertaining. It’s hard to be aware because it’s hard to close the loop of the purpose. Whatever the purpose may be, be it for entertainment reasons, keeping up with news, or whatever, the free for all of social media will keep you in a constant state of neurotic arousal all day.
I’m aware that this is all debatable and there are a million reasons people can point out why I’m wrong and missing out on the “revolution”, but I think the web has many ways to connect with people without using social media. I’m not quitting being social, but I’m cutting out the social from the media. It’s less crazy that way and something I can handle. I’m quitting unclear expectations and relationships and I don’t want to be all day trying to figure out and tolerating the random moods of people.
There are people that I’m sure that have a more clear purpose for using social media and stick to it. But for most of us, social media is either an illusion of an audience or an illusion of friends.
Writing in the Age of Distraction
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the “information overload” problem again and the whole Tim Ferris thing of going on a “information diet”. I still want to test out the “information fast” thing, but I don’t know if I’m hesitating because I’m simply procrastinating on it or because I don’t really have a “problem” of overabundance of information. There’s all these topics and issues about useful information vs distracting information. The entertaining vs the valuable. Anyway, I’m cooking up a draft about this subject.
Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow has an article over at Locus Magazine that’s similar to the train of thought I’m having about this topic:
The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn’t help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.
Will Work for Praise: The Web’s Free Labor Economy
Great insights on “crowdsourcing” and how web companies make people work for free. From the Business Week article:
Beyond brand-hungry strivers, masses of free laborers continue to toil without ever seeing a payday, or even angling for one. Many find compensation in currencies that predate the market economy. These include winning praise from peers, earning an exalted place within a community, scoring thrills from winning, and finding satisfaction in helping others.
Clay Shirky gives predictions on media. Here’s his take on the Newspapers’ future:
Jeff Jarvis said it beautifully: “If you can’t imagine anyone linking to what you’re about to write, don’t write it.” The things that the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast have are good storytelling and low costs. Newspapers are going to get more elitist and less elitist. The elitist argument is: “Be the Economist or New Yorker, a small, niche publication that says: ‘We’re only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.’” The populist model is: “We’re going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It’s whatever readers want to talk about.” Finding the working business model between them in that expanded range is the new challenge.
