On the principle that things are the opposite of what they claim to be, I’m thinking the Internet has brought information starvation and not information overload. Say a website amounts to 1MB, and you can spend an hour reading it, or a half hour. That’s roughly what a 3-minute song amounts to on a CD, roughly, for the sake of argument. I’m just saying, the information you process in five minutes, in analog, when you walk through a garden or watch a butterfly (fucking butterflies) fly across your yard, and hear the icecream truck’s bell jingle in the distance, and the splash of a kid across the neighborhood jumping into a pool, is vastly more than what you process in hours spent sitting at the computer. The smell of a rose – some roses at least – sending that over the Internet, if you could, how much bandwidth would that use? How many hours a day do some of us spend totally divorced from all of our senses except sight and hearing?
Actually, I’m partial to the smell of overclocked circuitry as my fingertips feel the gentle, magnetic rebound of the keys. From my comfortable chair, I command the ability to have delivered whatever consumables I require for sustenance… I’m working on being able to control sleep and worktime by simply dragging a cursor down from the menu bar.
I think that may be why I have a peach Snapple habit: ithe scent, the texture, the sensations that are missing when I gaze. But I don’t merely sit, I sway and tap and stuff too. And hum, doot dee doo.
fucking butterflies.
speaking of sensory deprivation, does anybody else find themselves absentmindedly highlighting and unhighlighting paragraphs on the screen?
i’ve always wondered why i do that, but i do it almost without thinking now.
or am i the only one.
pat? you’re the only one. i only do that when people make unfortunate background/foreground color choices.
bucking flutterflies.
I do that too. Really irritates people reading over your shoulder.
I agree with you, Mig. Lately at work I’ve been spending more time with computer un-related tasks, sorting mouldering promotional materials and health journals from the 1920’s and despite the dust and grime, I’m noticing that I feel much better than when I stare into the monitor all day. Some of it’s probably just lessoned eyestrain, but varying sensory input can’t hurt.