There now follows some space:
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.
.
Make of it what you will.
My point? Simply, that online there's not much of it to be found. Some other things largely missing: slowness, stillness, silence, length, permanence, distance, boredom. In short, the room to stop and think and absorb - or even just to stop - and the promptings so to do.
What do I mean?
Sites and information don't always stick around; news stories remain hot for at most a few days; emails/tweets/status updates/RSS-feeds can be checked again and again; pages auto-refresh; and even as you read, almost every site (including this one) constantly invites you elsewhere with hyperlinks, while nagging from the periphery with its widgets, lists and further options. In short, distraction is ever-present. So too the feeling of things rushing past. Always the urge to move on to something else. To catch up. To find out. To keep up.
And so we do. But how much do we absorb?
Some while ago, I got rid of my television. I was fed up with endlessly watching stuff I could hardly remember the day after. Now, I spend hours on the internet endlessly reading stuff I hardly remember after even half-an-hour - assuming that retaining just enough to successfully Google the rest some other time counts as remembering; which it doesn't. (Progress, they call it, mutters the grumpy old man who lives inside my spleen.)
Dr Paul Kelley, neuroscience-literate headmaster, and author of Making Minds: What's Wrong With Education?, advocates what he calls 'spaced learning': a teaching method that aims to create long-term memories through short bursts of intensive learning, followed by breaks, often physically active, during which the brain cells get to do whatever it is brain cells are supposed to do when there's something new to assimilate. On the web, unless we've happened across something startlingly new or revelatory, usually we just move straight on, to yet more information.
And even as we're reading we're distracted. Some research into multi-tasking - and I suppose that's what reading while trying to ignore/attend to distractions is - has found that rather than being super-efficient, multi-tasking often just equates to doing lots of different things concurrently slightly less well than if we'd spent the same time doing each one separately. (Or something like that, I forget.) Maybe that's another reason why many people still prefer to read anything of length offline, in printed medium, just the words, quietly framed by space?
But, of course, that's just how the internet is: lots of information, served up quick, in bitesize chunks - often paid for by ads, which thus have to go somewhere. So, maybe, I should just use a little self-discipline and just not move on so quickly, if I want to be sure of absorbing what I read?
True. I should. But that still doesn't alter that distraction is inherent in the internet. Even if you don't succumb to it, there's still the constant background distraction of trying not to. (Quick, stop thinking about polar bears! Now, what are you thinking about?)
I mentioned boredom, earlier. The internet is perhaps its ultimate antidote, and I love it for that, but we also need boredom: it's the very thing from which much worthwhile thought, creativity and invention arises in the first place - in rebellion against it, or just out of being forced to stop, imagine, reflect, think. (And now a couple of interesting boredom links, inserted by the hypocrite that lives inside my mouse). Boredom has value, purpose, qualities all its own, when you get to know it well.
But this isn't intended to be some reactionary screed - as I've already said, I like the internet. My intention is to suggest that what constitute the internet's strengths are also very much its weaknesses: in being quick, it lacks slowness; in being content-packed, it lacks space; in being ever-changing, it lacks stillness; in never ceasing, it lacks somewhere to stop. These are human needs too - for respite, peace, and the space to reflect and then act - but ones that are rarely met online. (EDIT: Will start searching out examples, over the next couple of weeks, for hopefully another blogpost.)
For those whose work involves the web, then: when you want to be noticed, to get a message across, to make your work stick in the memory, don't just look to the internet's strengths, maybe try - as well, or instead - to supply what it lacks. Make room for your audience: to stop, think, imagine, and look around. Give them somewhere to breathe. Somewhere refreshing. Space to unwind. The internet is always changing, but...
Maybe, sometimes, it should?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Make of it what you will.
My point? Simply, that online there's not much of it to be found. Some other things largely missing: slowness, stillness, silence, length, permanence, distance, boredom. In short, the room to stop and think and absorb - or even just to stop - and the promptings so to do.
What do I mean?
Sites and information don't always stick around; news stories remain hot for at most a few days; emails/tweets/status updates/RSS-feeds can be checked again and again; pages auto-refresh; and even as you read, almost every site (including this one) constantly invites you elsewhere with hyperlinks, while nagging from the periphery with its widgets, lists and further options. In short, distraction is ever-present. So too the feeling of things rushing past. Always the urge to move on to something else. To catch up. To find out. To keep up.
And so we do. But how much do we absorb?
Some while ago, I got rid of my television. I was fed up with endlessly watching stuff I could hardly remember the day after. Now, I spend hours on the internet endlessly reading stuff I hardly remember after even half-an-hour - assuming that retaining just enough to successfully Google the rest some other time counts as remembering; which it doesn't. (Progress, they call it, mutters the grumpy old man who lives inside my spleen.)
Dr Paul Kelley, neuroscience-literate headmaster, and author of Making Minds: What's Wrong With Education?, advocates what he calls 'spaced learning': a teaching method that aims to create long-term memories through short bursts of intensive learning, followed by breaks, often physically active, during which the brain cells get to do whatever it is brain cells are supposed to do when there's something new to assimilate. On the web, unless we've happened across something startlingly new or revelatory, usually we just move straight on, to yet more information.
And even as we're reading we're distracted. Some research into multi-tasking - and I suppose that's what reading while trying to ignore/attend to distractions is - has found that rather than being super-efficient, multi-tasking often just equates to doing lots of different things concurrently slightly less well than if we'd spent the same time doing each one separately. (Or something like that, I forget.) Maybe that's another reason why many people still prefer to read anything of length offline, in printed medium, just the words, quietly framed by space?
But, of course, that's just how the internet is: lots of information, served up quick, in bitesize chunks - often paid for by ads, which thus have to go somewhere. So, maybe, I should just use a little self-discipline and just not move on so quickly, if I want to be sure of absorbing what I read?
True. I should. But that still doesn't alter that distraction is inherent in the internet. Even if you don't succumb to it, there's still the constant background distraction of trying not to. (Quick, stop thinking about polar bears! Now, what are you thinking about?)
I mentioned boredom, earlier. The internet is perhaps its ultimate antidote, and I love it for that, but we also need boredom: it's the very thing from which much worthwhile thought, creativity and invention arises in the first place - in rebellion against it, or just out of being forced to stop, imagine, reflect, think. (And now a couple of interesting boredom links, inserted by the hypocrite that lives inside my mouse). Boredom has value, purpose, qualities all its own, when you get to know it well.
But this isn't intended to be some reactionary screed - as I've already said, I like the internet. My intention is to suggest that what constitute the internet's strengths are also very much its weaknesses: in being quick, it lacks slowness; in being content-packed, it lacks space; in being ever-changing, it lacks stillness; in never ceasing, it lacks somewhere to stop. These are human needs too - for respite, peace, and the space to reflect and then act - but ones that are rarely met online. (EDIT: Will start searching out examples, over the next couple of weeks, for hopefully another blogpost.)
For those whose work involves the web, then: when you want to be noticed, to get a message across, to make your work stick in the memory, don't just look to the internet's strengths, maybe try - as well, or instead - to supply what it lacks. Make room for your audience: to stop, think, imagine, and look around. Give them somewhere to breathe. Somewhere refreshing. Space to unwind. The internet is always changing, but...
Maybe, sometimes, it should?
.
.
.
