2 posts tagged “internet”

Chris Heathcote has a great post - everything ie anything - which looks at a couple of points in Clay Shirky's much-linked Web 2.0 conference keynote about television, web 2.0 content creation, and the "social surplus". Chris says

I find it a flimsy argument that grinding in World of Warcraft, watching Youtube videos, or I dunno, playing Sim City for 40 hours straight (Spore is going to kill me) is in any way better than watching TV, merely because it’s ‘doing something’.

Get a Life!: The Little Red Book of the White Dot

Last week, I noticed Iain Tait taking part in Mental Detox Week. Previously, this was Turn Off TV week, and years ago, when I read the White Dot book about television, and recognised a lot of what it was saying, and decided to do what it said. In the ten years since then, I've lived in a house with a TV for only three.

Did I ever miss TV? Not really. I had the radio for news, and much more besides - and the reports seemed much more raw, without the need for a camera crew to tag along (although I know usually the BBC was using the same people for both). Newspapers and magazines brought information to me. I still went to see films - in fact, one year early on I nearly saw a hundred films, many of them foreign or classic.

You'll notice something missing from this. Back then, home internet was still a luxury, with dial-up charges and per-minute call costs. It wasn't until 2000 that I got always-on internet. Over the years, I've slipped more and more into using the laptop for more and more of my leisure time. At first I was easily able to convince myself that this was different. I was creating and communicating. Look, here's all my friends on IRC. Here's the website I just built, and the photos I've taken.

Recently, though, I'm finding that belief harder to sustain. I can produce, but I also consume more. There's Flickr friends to surf, a dozen news sites to read. Along with IRC, there's Twitter- and I don't feel comfortable holding conversations there*. Instead of creating websites, I pour content into Vox and a blog - and there's less and less of a personal touch, more a sense of a piling up of stuff. I can spend an hour flicking though videos on YouTube, surfing through Orbital live performances, or I can spend an evening on iPlayer watching BBC Four documentaries.

Wait. I can spend an evening on iPlayer watching BBC Four documentaries. Isn't that what I was trying to get away from? Is it really that much better for me to be watching TV with the ability to be snarky about it via instant messaging? So it's tempting to switch the computer off, and do something less boring instead. No wonder Mental Detox Week includes computers as well as television now.

It's hard, though. It's harder than it was with TV. There, I was ignoring imaginary people. Now, I'd be ignoring friends, family, along with random - but real - strangers, whose work I've liked for one reason or another. I'm also finding it harder to socialise, now I've let ties wither down to merely digital connections. I have to use a computer at work, whereas avoiding TV there is trivial. Nonetheless, it's something I think would be worth some effort.

If I can't do any of that, though, I do need to make sure that I make my time at the laptop worth as much as possible.  The Internet isn't inherently better than TV, but if I make the right decisions, I hope I can at least make sure it's not worse.

* I know plenty of people do. I don't.

Pret have flipped into "Christmas" mode: I got a free orange with my croissant this morning. It's still on my desk. I think I'll have it after lunch.

There was a Vox question of the day last week about shopping online for Christmas, which I failed to answer at the time. Here, however, are my heroes and villains of present acquisition.

Villain: Apple

Apple won't take UK credit cards in their US online store. This meant that we couldn't get a present delivered to the US (where we'll be for Christmas), and certainly couldn't get it built to order. Boo.

Hero: Amazon

Filling the breach, Amazon were as usable as ever. The UK and US stores share data (notably address books and payment methods), so there was no problem paying with a UK card for US delivery. They were good about keeping in touch about stock levels, and provide exemplary tracking data. For some reason, their express one-day delivery in the UK wound up being cheaper than the default, so everything arrived in plenty of time. Lovely.