Wow, two great tech-oriented manifestos have been published pretty much back-to-back: David Shields’ Reality Hunger and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget. These two reviews of the books are more eloquent than I could muster.
I expected a binge to follow the conclusion of the Slow Media Diet, but it never came. My habits actually haven’t changed much since it ended. I now keep tabs on a few sites related to technical videomaking stuff, like Jem Shofield’s excellent The C47, and I’ve dropped in at Daring Fireball and The AV Club a few times, but mostly I stick to books and magazines.
(Speaking of books, I highly recommend the gossipy and addictive Game Change, an insider account of the ’08 election campaigns. I’m now digging into Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget.)
My life has changed much more than I thought it would. My mind is more peaceful, I have a more nutritious media diet and my body appreciates spending less time hunched in front of a laptop. We’ll see if I slip back into old habits, but for the foreseeable future my medium of choice is words on paper.
Alright, that’s it’s for that topic for a while. I’m currently finishing a little paid video gig and working on a reinvention of the Goodie Bag style. Stay tuned for more on these.
Things fell apart a bit this week and I’m not sure that my lapses were the cause.
I’ve been working a lot for a couple weeks now. In many ways that’s made this challenge easier – I have little free time to kill — but I also have little energy left for anything but the most passive diversions. During these periods of end-of-the-day exhaustion, I started watching Philip Bloom’s video training and episodes of Mac Break Studio. I considered these fair game because they’re research for work I’m doing. But I soon found myself zoning out to the the Mac Break episodes, checking out a few other sorta related videos, and then watching an episode of a (very good) Monty Python documentary series. I got into that, thought ‘fuck it’ and watched all six episodes.
During alone times last week I often found one trivial interior dialogue would lead hyperlink-style to another and another and another. My mind was the most chaotic it’s been in quite some time and I don’t think watching videos before dozing off caused this.
Despite my lapses, I didn’t exactly go on a fast media binge. I didn’t touch my RSS feeds, emailing was minimal and I only did a little web surfing when research went astray. I think I’ve learned my problems with focus and neurotic thought cycles aren’t just the result of my immoderate fondness of fast media. I’ll explore this more in the next update.
In other news, I did an interview with the BBC about this project. My thanks to Jamilah Knowles.
Good’s Slow Issue
The Attention Revolution, B. Alan Wallace
So far I can’t say The Slow Media Diet has been difficult, but that could be because I have such a backlog of books and podcasts I’d been ignoring in favor of videos and the web. Right now books and radio are refreshing, but I don’t think that will last. At some point I expect to get a serious itch to veg out with a movie.
Early observation: the days are seeming longer and more productive.
Things I’m Reading
The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond
House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski
Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
The Economist
Things I’m Listening to
RadioLab
AV Club Talk
