it only makes sense. not only are there more modes of communication but each one arrives faster, and now even to one location--the palm of your hand, the inner zip of your purse. how's a gal or guy to keep up with it all?
either you give your real life of five senses and interaction with other real lives over to some sub-life that looks an awful lot like yours only on a flat screen, or you move through it all a lot faster in order to keep up. with the number of people engrossed in ipods/pads/touches, it seems like for most it's an equal mix of both.
the thing is refusing to participate isn't the answer either. not reading any emails, responding to any texts, or looking at profile pages isn't exactly fulfilling. because if you can't get together over a beer and laugh about the facebook link to a zach galifianakis stand-up bit, what is there to laugh at?
this guardian article* seemed to make the exact point i'd been pondering: in order to keep up we try to take in too much too fast (that's what she said) to the detriment of actual absorption and learning.
According to The Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.so i was all on board and excited by this finding until about the fifth paragraph. at this point the author talks about this new fad called "slow reading." about it they say
Miedema writes on his website that slow reading, like slow food, is now, at root, a localist idea which can help connect a reader to his neighbourhood. "Slow reading," writes Miedema, "is a community event restoring connections between ideas and people. The continuity of relationships through reading is experienced when we borrow books from friends; when we read long stories to our kids until they fall asleep.umm, NEWSFLASH. this already has a name, yeah. it's called reading.
why the need to reinvent something that already exists? reading without being next to the computer or rereading a passage are things already inherent in the act of opening book. now it might take an iota of effort to shy away from the distractions, but if one's engaged enough in a book to open it and sit down then i think they can manage. none of these things--borrowing a book, reading to your kids, enjoying a novel--are new ideas. so why a new name? are we glamorizing reading to seduce people into doing it? i can just imagine,
oh i'm sorry there's no way i could poooossibly make that dinner date. i have my slow reading group tonight at 9pm.
oh really? what's that, this slow reading you speak of?
well. it's this new thing that started in france by a group of professors from paris 8. there are ten of us in the group. although it's not really a group in the traditional sense you might be thinking of because we all do it separately on our own time, but that doesn't detract from the sense of community we all feel just based on the simple fact we're cognizant that we're all doing it--as a group. anyway. i find that i do my best slow reading when i'm alone. with just a little soft music playing. and a glass of red. and my soft reading silk stretch pants. with some rice cakes. and candles. and the window open...
it comes to this: if you didn't enjoy reading before, you're not going to enjoy it now--slow, medium, or fast. the distracting apps and droids of today are just the neighborhood friend ringing the doorbell or little orphan annie on the radio of before. and to end on an optimistic note, those who engage in a text now will continue to do so even when their phone is implanted in their pinky.
*full disclosure: i did not read the entire article.
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