Random
In search of lost internet time
This is not an accomplishment: Yesterday, I woke up at 6:30am and went to sleep at 11:30pm, roughly. I spent under an hour on the internet.
This may not seem like a big deal to you, but this is the least amount of time I’ve spent on the internet while being in town (that is, not out of town, e.g. on campus visits, giving readings, or – dare I say it? – vacation) in years.
And my time moved differently. It didn’t accelerate or slow down or anything like that: it’s just different time.
Like, everything happens so quickly on the internet. I can find any information I want there, I can have conversations with people who live anywhere instantaneously, I can make coffee dates and dinner dates without picking up the phone, I can make reservations for a moving truck and download movies and music, the internet can remind me of things I’d forgotten or things I didn’t even know I’d forgotten. It’s a magical mystical land.
There are times when I really question if the internet is better than reality.
One day with limited internet, and I wonder: Do you spend more of your time in reality or virtual reality? Are they the same thing now? What differentiates them for you? How do you spend your virtual time? How do you spend your non-virtual time?
I generally spend more time on the internet than most average people, perhaps mostly due to the fact that my job finds me sitting at a computer for 7.5 hours a day with little to do.
Of course, my computer at work has been dead the last two days, so I’ve also noticed that time moves differently (I also finished/read 7 short books in the time I’d normally have been online…). I think it’s actually frustrating because, while I do appreciate the fact that I’m getting reading done, I’m actually far more productive when I’m online, if only because, through the years, that’s how I’ve taught myself to be productive.
Luciano Floridi points out that as “digital immigrants” (us) are replaced by “digital natives” we are most likely going to have to reontologize our environment to such a degree that we become interconnected informational organisms (i.e., “inforgs”) where the distinction between offline and online is a meaningless one. To me, this is profoundly sad state of affairs. Because there is an entire phenomenology of the body–in the sense that Merleau-Ponty speaks of it–that is so vital to life and gets lost in cyberspace.
I’ve recently cut my TV off and noticed that now I spend way more time online. I don’t know if this is a good thing. I used to do things while the TV was on, reading, writing, dishes, etc, but when I’m geeking on the net that’s all I’m doing.
I took a grad course on Heidegger and the issue of cyberspace was brought up, and I remember the phrase “people were throwing virtual dildos at virtual Hillary Clinton” being used.
Also, Baudrillard’s work on hyperreality and virtual reality ask many of these same questions. If you want more, I’d start there (although I’m not sure you’ll find your answer to which is better, virtual reality or reality. In Baudrillard’s opinion, it seems the two are one).
http://xrl.us/bh8tjk
Without any television I spend most every moment at home on the internet. I have to keep my computer in a separate room if I want to get any sort of reading done. That’s why I implement the trick of not ever going home until I’ve gotten everything I want taken care of taken care of in a public place. Get my writing done at some coffee shop with shitty wi-fi, go to the gym, go to the bar and watch NBA playoffs. Then, when I get home, it’s like I’m rewarding myself with the internet. I earned it!
I implemented the same trick in college, except whenever I got home I rewarded myself with binge drinking.
I have yet to teach myself how to be productive online. My girlfriend takes the modem when she goes to work, so most days I don’t have to even have to think about it. We don’t have cable either, so the only distractions are writing, reading, playing with the dogs. I don’t even have a phone.
The internet is cool. There’s endless information. That’s neat. But I think people–myself included, some days–idolize it too much, make it out to be more than it really is. You don’t really need the internet as much as you think you do.
I didn’t have an email account or a computer, nor had I ever been on the Internet (except for two classes at university, classes where either communicating with classmates via chatroom or getting info online were required) until 2007.
I plant grass seed in my yard by hand – I mean with my fingers.
I don’t use a household dishwashing machine, because I think putting dishes in a ‘dishwashing’ machine only after one has to get them clean is stupid.
I think the distinction between ‘book smarts’ and ‘street smarts’ is about 90% bullshit.
– but that leaves a higher percentage of relation to reality than arguments that either internet reality or outernet reality is ‘more real’.
I didn’t have an email account or a computer, nor had I ever been on the Internet (except for two classes at university, classes where either communicating with classmates via chatroom or getting info online were required) until 2007.
I plant grass seed in my yard by hand – I mean with my fingers.
I don’t use a household dishwashing machine, because I think putting dishes in a ‘dishwashing’ machine only after one has to get them clean is stupid.
I think the distinction between ‘book smarts’ and ‘street smarts’ is about 90% bullshit.
– but that leaves a higher percentage of relation to reality than arguments that either internet reality or outernet reality is ‘more real’.
yeah, i like going outside a lot, too. basil and parsley are extremely important to me. also, bodies can do fun, interesting things.
dishwashing machines are strange, except maybe in the case of a grand feast.
i don’t believe in cell phones; payphones are much sturdier. also, please leave me alone.
facebook is the most confusing thing and frightens me mostly. i like the internet, generally, though. here i am.
i don’t know about book smarts or street smarts.
i feel as though you must have a garden. do you have a garden?
(subspace transmission to Deaders)
1. “I don’t use a household dishwashing machine, because I think putting dishes in a ‘dishwashing’ machine only after one has to get them clean is stupid.”
Finally finding TWOMD (the woman of my… etc), and marrying her, put an end to the once-apparently-endless cycle of making this very case to various women before they moved in with me (each, resp., in a sequence, that is)… and then regretting it as the dishes piled up. I came to understand that the dishwasher justifies its cost by making its owners think they have to justify its cost. An extremely expensive “WASH THE DISHES!” plaque would work just as well.
2. “I think the distinction between ‘book smarts’ and ‘street smarts’ is about 90% bullshit.”
Closer to 95% in literate countries
in the 7 years I’ve lived with my wife we’ve used the dishwasher 4 times, all of them after hosting Thanksgiving dinner. There’s a kind of zen peacefulness to washing dishes with your hands that I actually look forward to. The warmth of the water, the cleaning, even seeing the dishes and cutlery shining as they dry are all pleasurable experiences, even if I don’t consciously recognize them all the time.
As far as planting stuff outside, sheesh. Groundhogs would just eat it anyway.
Re: Groundhogs: Deaders kills them by hand.
and then plants them with fingers.
industrial dishwashers – what are in restaurants – actually have water spraying under high enough pressure to work (though there is still scrubbing/scraping to be done)
domestic ‘dishwashing’ machines – that splash soapy water on crusty dishes – come on, now
(if your kids played in the bathtub like that, you would scrub their asses yourself, and you probably don’t eat nutrition off of ass)
parsley: why
“Groundhogs”?? Tear a page from the Egyptian granary (or deep-sea mariner) playbook: cat.
i like baudrillard well enough. i’ve read a bit of theory on this stuff, but it’s a whole different thing to watch it in action.
last summer, i wrote for two hours every morning in my garden. i watched my tomatoes and lettuce and kale grow. from seeds. that was probably the best summer i’ve ever had.
i have never had a dishwasher, other than a sponge.
groundhogarian (they grow on trees)
maybe you can get a groundhog steak at a dumbclucks to go with your ‘coffee’ in that doll cup
i don’t have kids, but i agree with your point about ass and dishwashers.
italian parsley is a beautiful thing necessary as a base ingredient of many simple white wine sauces.
The current obsession and obscene amount of time we spend on the internet will soon be confronted by a violent revolt against it during which people will align their lives against a life spent online—the Hegelian antithesis to the present thesis, as it were. Accordingly, a synthesis will eventually come about (I hope) in which we use the internet for what we need and the functions by which it is truly helpful in a holistic sense, and eschew the rest. The idea—purported by Mark Zuckerberg, I think—that first people lived in the country, then people lived in the city, and in the future people will live on the internet, neglects to consider that time spent on the internet is not really “living” in the sense that has applied to sentient beings since they began to exist. Regardless of how convenient time spent online can seem—I can book a rental car and order a frappuccino while Skyping my friend in Berlin and reading flash fiction!—we still have our bodies to consider, and eight-hour days staring (most likely sedentary) at a screen does not do them well at all, and no amount of organic food or time at the gym can offset its detriments. I’ll take physical interaction over online interaction any day, and I find that most people who prefer online socializing are those who have carved such an incredibly niche-y set of interests that they have alienated themselves from everyone in their close physical proximity. This contributes to the individualization of society—bye bye, The People—which makes us all the more vulnerable to exploitation by big business and other capitalist concerns. Says the guy commenting on a blog post.
dishwashers make me feel clean and the need to feel clean means i am a bad wasteful person but this is okay because i can sleep knowing my dishes are squeaking in their cleanliness and there is no dirty ever in my cabinet world of squeaking dishes
parsley has a faint herbal sweetness, but I didn’t know there was enough flavor in the parsley ‘family’ for it to be more useful than, say, a handful of crabgrass
i think it’s funny to have this conversation online.
i feel like i ‘need’ alone time IRL because i hang out with so many people on the internet. it’s all so overwhelming and constantly wonderful; the party never diiiiiies.
i don’t like “regular” parsley at all, but italian parsley, the flat leaf kind, is typically somewhat sweet while at the same time remaining “fresh” tasting. shouldn’t be eaten raw, i don’t think – cooked in olive oil brings out what i consider a kind of nutty flavor and then adding a generous pour of a white wine like Orvieto brings out the sweetness. i know a seriously easily (and very typical) ital dish with ital parsley, garlic, shallot, porcini mushrooms, and white wine with a tagliatelle pasta that i think would change your mind about parsley (it’s an earthy kind of dish, with the parsley and porcini’s).
I’m a badly Low Low Fail as a gourmand, because
I think mushrooms taste like the dead tree they were growing on
some dirt on a burger, tsawright
hey
what does it mean or ‘mean’ that that clock face is spiraling counterclockwise
is it a quantum-mechanics gag
‘what did the particle and anti-particle say to each other?’ ‘nothingness’
(that is a quantum-mechanics joke or ‘joke’ that was just made up)
is ‘somethingness’ more thinkable than ‘nothingness’, or is ‘somethingness’ the condition for the possibility of ‘thinking’ at all
“puppets” is a better verb for it (the reverse-Gere technique of ritual husbandry)
“I think mushrooms taste like the dead tree they were growing on”
…you’re lucky you weren’t told what I was once told (by one of the sylphs I talked out of co-owning a dishwasher), if that’s what you associate the taste of mushrooms with
When I was a kid (home from school, sick) I noticed my mother logging 3-4 hours of phone-chatting per weekday. Had she been a “housewife” in the 21st century, she could also have combined the chatting (with dozens of friends near and far) with virtual trips to the cinema, art museum and library (with a few quick nips into a porn cinema), along with shopping trips to virtual record shops, flea markets, department stores plus clandestine visits with radical underground movements… all before hubby returned from the office. I call that an improvement.
What *hasn’t* improved, in all these years, is the wholesale slaughter (and desecration) of “leisure time” represented by watching Television (aka the unidirectional, big-ticket, politico-corporate propaganda highway). And because Television is the real evil, discussions like *this*, with TV as the culprit instead of the Internet, are tellingly rare. Turn off (better: sledge hammer) your TV and you can surf robustly *and* spend hours “outside” every day, too.
I think that that polyutility of the internet is a fair note to strike.
If, instead of interneting, people were combing through Chaucer, or learning Chinese, or figuring out how to get fuel from algae – or, much> better, how to use algae to recycle some of the carbon dioxide and methane from the atmosphere – , well, that’d be better than hanging out at HTMLG. But the internet is often the antithesis to pose against the many theses of outernet knob-polishing (like most tv).
Also: why the “antithesis” between the internet and constructive outernet activities (including work and sleep)? Hasn’t the synthesis Nate talks of already been ‘put together’ by at least some internet humbots?
“Also: why the “antithesis” between the internet and constructive outernet activities (including work and sleep)?”
My *job* job (composer) is *unthinkable* without this tool.
Right. Most people’s time on the internet is equivalent to television.
I think the antithesis will involve an acknowledgment and rejection of internet time as such an equivalent, and probably an increase in back-to-the-earth gardening activities, or whatever, which is already happening. If my magical future vision is correct, this will influence the direction by which programming evolves, providing humans with a way to experience the benefits of the web without the degree of its soul-sucking byproducts. In the future, “being on the internet” will be a different experience than what it is now, probably radically so, which will allow us to use it “better”. Whether that means studying Chaucer or fomenting revolt or merely not crippling my spine by sitting in this chair and putting off carpal tunnel for a few years, I don’t know.
And yes, there are lots of jobs these days that “require” you to be on the internet, but that’s not the way it has to be.
“And yes, there are lots of jobs these days that “require” you to be on the internet, but that’s not the way it has to be.”
My job doesn’t “require” me to be online any more that I’m required to eat soup with a spoon; the internet just makes it easier by factors of ten (example: typical pop song that will do double-duty in an ad campaign in Western Europe takes about 20-30 drafts in the lyrics department; group-mailing revised lyrics *with* guide vox mp3s to production partners + the demo singer… how did we do it before?).
People “waste time” online for personal, not *structural* reasons (they can just as easily waste time in a reading room at the Bodleian or in an expensive seminar with a name-brand guru).
“Most people’s time on the internet is equivalent to television.”
It may feel/seem that way but quite a lot of the usage-pattern of even the most stubbornly passive user of the Internet is extremely reading/writing-intensive (not to mention fraught with choice and individualized with basic creativity) compared the interfacing with TV. If anything, TV will morph in the direction of the Internet and *that* will be the thesis + antithesis = synthesis paradigm.
And, again, as Deaders asks: why the gardening vs internet dichotomy? Surely there’s time in every day for both (in fact, my wife and daughter did, in fact, do both today… while I opted for the 2.5-hour walk/4-hour Internet/3-hour household chores/x-hours late-night-reading-and-writing Time Package).
I think the internet will end TV. Or shift it to the internet, but even then it won’t be the same TV.
Agreed: “If anything, TV will morph in the direction of the Internet and *that* will be the thesis + antithesis = synthesis paradigm. “
That 5 or 10% would be the 14 year old who pops a cap on someone’s head to make his bones.
I understand that that 14-year old is responding to pressures that compel a reasonableness of their own, but how it that that 14-year old’s decision clarifies the distinction between ‘book smarts’ and ‘street smarts’?
The function of my dishwasher is necessary, if primarily psychological. It’s pretty much the only thing that can counteract my OCD tendency to spend hours on the dishes. With the dishwasher I can de-food the dishes and put them in the magical box that transforms them into what I can convince myself is “clean”.
the internet is inside of reality