The article is ~1700 words. It takes the author ~950 words to get past her autobiographical background and finally start the meat of the message:
>, and, glued to our devices, playing video games, or checking theDaily Mail, we waste enormous amounts of time — even while pretending otherwise.
>, they’re busy with text messages and Snapchat, with Tumblr and Vine.
>If my son spends his afternoons watching FIFA videos on YouTube, or my daughter studying nail-painting tutorials, these are no worse ways to spend time than watching Get Smart or Diff’rent Strokes — arguably, they are better. Their world, however, is more monolithic.
Lastly, it closes with:
>It’s all here, inside and in the room — not on the screen — before us.
In essence, it's another "stop and smell the roses" essay. Similar templates for essays would be the "slow living"[1], or "be in the present moment"[2],
and "power of now" type of messages.
If you're not already familiar with those themes, you may find something new in the essay. Otherwise, it's just another author's take on the same material.
Ironic how your comment kind of epitomizes the whole gist of the article.
It was well written, and the take away for me was not the closing sentence you quoted. As a father, it echoed a similar sentiment I've been thinking and have read about recently, namely:
> They’d have to learn to lie on the lawn watching ants scale the grass blades; they’d have to linger, digits pruning, in the bathtub; they’d have to stop, to be still, and then to wait, and wait, and wait, allowing time to fatten around them, like a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf. And then, only then, who knows what they might imagine or invent?
If you like that, you might also like Thoreau's 1854 book "Walden"[1]
It is over 100,000 words about ignoring the silly distractions in town and making close observations of nature that help one to "discover oneself".
For example, he writes about how he closely watches ant colonies fighting and compares them to the armies in The Iliad, etc, etc.
But I do understand that ~1700 words in a magazine article is more digestible than 100k words from a 160 year old book if the themes are unfamiliar to the reader.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
Thanks for that ... I stuck on that sentence too. What you should really do after reading this article is just stop doing anything for a few minutes. Seriously. Nothing. Don't check your phone, don't flip through the mail. Don't sort dishes in the sink. Don't grab a glass of water. Just sit and don't do anything. I dare you :)
My wife can't stand taking a bath with the kids because they always want to be in there for about 20 minutes longer than her sanity allows. I've discovered just sitting there with them, hanging out, watching them play and I love it.
Man, if we can't stop and watch the things move around us ...
The meta-irony is that an article lambasting the "TL;DR culture" needed a TL;DR to be palatable. I always appreciate when someone takes the time to summarize these "wall of text" articles, since I tend to not have 30 whole minutes spend while the author tries to get to the point. I need things to be boiled down (I'm looking at you, New Yorker!) and I personally find more utility in skimming 10 articles than fully investing in a single one.
I love that you posted a TL;DR: on an article whose sole focus is on taking more time. (Full disclosure, I also skimmed the beginning of the article and then jumped here to the comments.)
You're commenting on an article within America's oldest literary journal. A literary journal pontificates, deviates, muses on subjects. Taking time to frame a subject - partly for enjoyment of the process - is par for the course.
As other comments noted below, the whole point of the article seems to have been lost to you (as they say these days: woosh!)
It's also wonderful that you have taken the time to count the words instead of reading them; the number of words, the length of sentences, the frequency of certain words, the number of results in a Google search: you may feel safer with numbers, but not all measurements mean something.
>It's also wonderful that you have taken the time to count the words instead of reading them; the number of words,
I read the article in a viewer that automatically shows a running word count down the margin.
I have a limited time budget for reading so I always have to know in advance if the article is 1000 words (less than 5 minutes) or 20,000 words (over 1 hour of reading which means I print it out and take it on the train).
I feel like you missed the point of my comment. The author's essay has already been done thousands of times by thousands of authors using different variations of words. (Indeed... see another poster commenting on Russell's "On Idleness"). They're not bad essays. It's just that there are so many of them.
Since many HN readers are well-read, they have already read dozens of these type of essays. My comment is to give them a heads up and save them time. On the other hand, if you found the essay filled a hole for you, that's great.
I disagree with you on the "whole point" of the article. She goes to great pains to talk about observing things like ants and coffee with friends instead of staring at screens. I don't see her emphasizing that one must read redundant articles on the same topic repeatedly. On the contrary, more time spent reading her essay is less time to spend observing ants.
> I have a limited time budget for reading (...) My comment is to give them a heads up and save them time. (...) I disagree with you on the "whole point" of the article (...)
more time spent reading her essay is less time to spend observing ants
The point of the article is not that everyone should become an entomologist.
It's that time should be wasted, not saved, that there is value in doing nothing, or, well, reading something several times, or, well, different variations on one theme.
You really think my reading skills are so deficient that I thought she was lecturing everyone on becoming an entymologist? Really? Or are you not engaging with the meaning of what I actually said?
>that there is value in doing nothing, or, well, reading something several times,
No, you misunderstood her. She wrote:
>It’s all here, inside and in the room — not on the screen — before us.
In other words, how about not spending "screen time" on harpers.org reading her essay (especially if you've already been exposed to it like many HN'rs already have).
Instead, she advises to appreciate doing "nothing", savoring "boredom", and experiencing "empty" time -- such as watching ants, sharing coffee, listening to rain, whatever.
(And no, I don't think she's lecturing us on becoming meteorologists to study precipitation -- so you don't need to go there.)
How is YouTube, Instagram, Facebook—all sites with millions of people sharing what they've created in thousand of small, interconnected communities—how could that possibly be more monolithic than everyone reading the same book, no matter how nourishing Buddenbrooks happens to be?
Best guess is that by monolithic the author means homogeneous. Watching instructional videos on nail care is more educational than Family Ties, for sure, but it's easier to get stuck on a very specific value system or culture on the internet.
The smorgasboard of teh internets means that we never have to consume anything we don't already like. In a perverted way, having access to billions of small pieces of content homogenizes our personal experiences. When there's only a few pieces of content, the differentiation comes in our experiences with it. You and I may have something to talk about if we're both reading Walden. But if you've been watching unboxing videos of new laptops and I've been catching up on how to build fairy houses it doesn't matter that we're both living in the same house. That's a little sad.
>but it's easier to get stuck on a very specific value system or culture on the internet.
It's even easier to do that offline.
>You and I may have something to talk about if we're both reading Walden. But if you've been watching unboxing videos of new laptops and I've been catching up on how to build fairy houses it doesn't matter that we're both living in the same house. That's a little sad.
Only if the person interested in laptop specs and the person interested in building fairy houses never share their interests with one another. Perhaps both have more to learn, not just about each other, but things in general than if both were reading Walden?
That's a fair argument, but in my experiences those two people do not share their interests. If you live with children in the house, you know how that goes.
Now going offline with things is no promise that there will be more shared culture, but there's more of a chance than a world where we have access to exactly what we're interested in all the time (via cellphones, especially).
There is a feedback loop to our lives online that is not present when we're forced into social situations with people that we don't necessarily see eye to eye with. Note, it's not always fun to be with people we don't see eye to eye with (witness: family car trips) but if we don't learn conflict resolution and tolerance there, the internet sure isn't going to help.
>That's a fair argument, but in my experiences those two people do not share their interests. If you live with children in the house, you know how that goes.
Having 5 younger siblings - I know very well how this goes. But is it a problem? If they lack similar interests what difference does it make if they're both reading books if the books are different? If one is reading romance literature and the other Stephen King, are they in any better a situation?
Myself and the eldest of my siblings talk a lot about our personal interests, though we share very little of the same interests. We both enjoy learning and make a great effort to empathize with each other and understand each others' hobbies and do our best to encourage them. This close relationship, sadly, does not exist with my other siblings. I largely blame the age gap. I'm only 3 years older than the eldest but over 12 years older than the rest of them.
I don't disagree that offline has more potential for running into contradictory opinions and viewpoints. That's why I find comment sections so important, although they are often dwindling and filled with flamebaiting trolls they are also one of the few sources of contradicting opinions that some people face.
But that same offline experience shows me that many people live in their own social bubbles of people with similarly-held beliefs. Religious institutions are my best example for this. How often do you find a Christian at a Mosque or reading the Quran? They're mostly attending their own Church and associating with other people who go to that Church who largely hold the same beliefs they do. This extends to fanclubs, school cliques, and more social structures. People don't tend to branch out.
Offline or online the scenario, to me, is largely the same and just as sad.
I'm mostly addressing the last half of your comment.
I agree that polarization is very bad (about trolls vs. yes men in comments). It prevents real discussion.
Perhaps, but consider the following, which will be a reason to encourage off-topic conversations. You have multiple 'similar-interest groups' that you belong to that are orthogonal - my work buddies have different religious views and my fellow congregational members have different occupations than I.
IIRC, Facebook edits what they show you in the feed based on what you click a lot - so what you are provided with tends to be what you agree with. And other non-interactive material make it harder to have conversation. Lastly, I think things done online usually happen in the context of an online community that tends to anchor the conversation there - not necessarily bad, but potentially if the conversation/community is homogenous.
Really the solution is to try and talk about things we disagree about - and with children, it probably happens rarely unless we consciously try to do so.
>IIRC, Facebook edits what they show you in the feed based on what you click a lot - so what you are provided with tends to be what you agree with. And other non-interactive material make it harder to have conversation. Lastly, I think things done online usually happen in the context of an online community that tends to anchor the conversation there - not necessarily bad, but potentially if the conversation/community is homogenous.
This depends entirely on what sort of sites you visit. I agree that sites like FB and Twitter that do that are harmful and promote homogeneity.
>Perhaps, but consider the following, which will be a reason to encourage off-topic conversations. You have multiple 'similar-interest groups' that you belong to that are orthogonal - my work buddies have different religious views and my fellow congregational members have different occupations than I.
My friend from Australia whom I play video games with is studying to become a geophysicists. While a lot of what he learns is a bit over my head, I enjoy discussing what he is learning with him to the best of my ability. I'd consider that orthogonal.
Just like you can ask your congregational members about their occupations - you can ask your online friends about theirs as well!
Perhaps its a part of "internet etiquette" that people don't go off-topic as often as they might offline?
I don't deny that the internet might promote homogeneous communities more-so than offline, but by no means is it a limit or barrier that cannot be passed once someone becomes aware of it and desires to change the behavior.
24 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] thread>, and, glued to our devices, playing video games, or checking theDaily Mail, we waste enormous amounts of time — even while pretending otherwise.
>, they’re busy with text messages and Snapchat, with Tumblr and Vine.
>If my son spends his afternoons watching FIFA videos on YouTube, or my daughter studying nail-painting tutorials, these are no worse ways to spend time than watching Get Smart or Diff’rent Strokes — arguably, they are better. Their world, however, is more monolithic.
Lastly, it closes with:
>It’s all here, inside and in the room — not on the screen — before us.
In essence, it's another "stop and smell the roses" essay. Similar templates for essays would be the "slow living"[1], or "be in the present moment"[2], and "power of now" type of messages.
If you're not already familiar with those themes, you may find something new in the essay. Otherwise, it's just another author's take on the same material.
[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=slow+living
[2]https://www.google.com/search?q=be+present+zen
It was well written, and the take away for me was not the closing sentence you quoted. As a father, it echoed a similar sentiment I've been thinking and have read about recently, namely:
> They’d have to learn to lie on the lawn watching ants scale the grass blades; they’d have to linger, digits pruning, in the bathtub; they’d have to stop, to be still, and then to wait, and wait, and wait, allowing time to fatten around them, like a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf. And then, only then, who knows what they might imagine or invent?
It is over 100,000 words about ignoring the silly distractions in town and making close observations of nature that help one to "discover oneself".
For example, he writes about how he closely watches ant colonies fighting and compares them to the armies in The Iliad, etc, etc.
But I do understand that ~1700 words in a magazine article is more digestible than 100k words from a 160 year old book if the themes are unfamiliar to the reader.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
My wife can't stand taking a bath with the kids because they always want to be in there for about 20 minutes longer than her sanity allows. I've discovered just sitting there with them, hanging out, watching them play and I love it.
Man, if we can't stop and watch the things move around us ...
Then perhaps New Yorker is not the sort of thing you should be reading?
It's also wonderful that you have taken the time to count the words instead of reading them; the number of words, the length of sentences, the frequency of certain words, the number of results in a Google search: you may feel safer with numbers, but not all measurements mean something.
I read the article in a viewer that automatically shows a running word count down the margin.
I have a limited time budget for reading so I always have to know in advance if the article is 1000 words (less than 5 minutes) or 20,000 words (over 1 hour of reading which means I print it out and take it on the train).
I feel like you missed the point of my comment. The author's essay has already been done thousands of times by thousands of authors using different variations of words. (Indeed... see another poster commenting on Russell's "On Idleness"). They're not bad essays. It's just that there are so many of them.
Since many HN readers are well-read, they have already read dozens of these type of essays. My comment is to give them a heads up and save them time. On the other hand, if you found the essay filled a hole for you, that's great.
I disagree with you on the "whole point" of the article. She goes to great pains to talk about observing things like ants and coffee with friends instead of staring at screens. I don't see her emphasizing that one must read redundant articles on the same topic repeatedly. On the contrary, more time spent reading her essay is less time to spend observing ants.
The point of the article is not that everyone should become an entomologist.
It's that time should be wasted, not saved, that there is value in doing nothing, or, well, reading something several times, or, well, different variations on one theme.
You really think my reading skills are so deficient that I thought she was lecturing everyone on becoming an entymologist? Really? Or are you not engaging with the meaning of what I actually said?
>that there is value in doing nothing, or, well, reading something several times,
No, you misunderstood her. She wrote:
>It’s all here, inside and in the room — not on the screen — before us.
In other words, how about not spending "screen time" on harpers.org reading her essay (especially if you've already been exposed to it like many HN'rs already have).
Instead, she advises to appreciate doing "nothing", savoring "boredom", and experiencing "empty" time -- such as watching ants, sharing coffee, listening to rain, whatever.
(And no, I don't think she's lecturing us on becoming meteorologists to study precipitation -- so you don't need to go there.)
I don't know you; I don't know anything about your reading skills. What you've shown so far isn't promising, though, IMHO.
Let's agree to disagree and go do something else. It's midnight in Paris, I'm going to bed.
How is YouTube, Instagram, Facebook—all sites with millions of people sharing what they've created in thousand of small, interconnected communities—how could that possibly be more monolithic than everyone reading the same book, no matter how nourishing Buddenbrooks happens to be?
The smorgasboard of teh internets means that we never have to consume anything we don't already like. In a perverted way, having access to billions of small pieces of content homogenizes our personal experiences. When there's only a few pieces of content, the differentiation comes in our experiences with it. You and I may have something to talk about if we're both reading Walden. But if you've been watching unboxing videos of new laptops and I've been catching up on how to build fairy houses it doesn't matter that we're both living in the same house. That's a little sad.
It's even easier to do that offline.
>You and I may have something to talk about if we're both reading Walden. But if you've been watching unboxing videos of new laptops and I've been catching up on how to build fairy houses it doesn't matter that we're both living in the same house. That's a little sad.
Only if the person interested in laptop specs and the person interested in building fairy houses never share their interests with one another. Perhaps both have more to learn, not just about each other, but things in general than if both were reading Walden?
Now going offline with things is no promise that there will be more shared culture, but there's more of a chance than a world where we have access to exactly what we're interested in all the time (via cellphones, especially).
There is a feedback loop to our lives online that is not present when we're forced into social situations with people that we don't necessarily see eye to eye with. Note, it's not always fun to be with people we don't see eye to eye with (witness: family car trips) but if we don't learn conflict resolution and tolerance there, the internet sure isn't going to help.
Having 5 younger siblings - I know very well how this goes. But is it a problem? If they lack similar interests what difference does it make if they're both reading books if the books are different? If one is reading romance literature and the other Stephen King, are they in any better a situation?
Myself and the eldest of my siblings talk a lot about our personal interests, though we share very little of the same interests. We both enjoy learning and make a great effort to empathize with each other and understand each others' hobbies and do our best to encourage them. This close relationship, sadly, does not exist with my other siblings. I largely blame the age gap. I'm only 3 years older than the eldest but over 12 years older than the rest of them.
I don't disagree that offline has more potential for running into contradictory opinions and viewpoints. That's why I find comment sections so important, although they are often dwindling and filled with flamebaiting trolls they are also one of the few sources of contradicting opinions that some people face.
But that same offline experience shows me that many people live in their own social bubbles of people with similarly-held beliefs. Religious institutions are my best example for this. How often do you find a Christian at a Mosque or reading the Quran? They're mostly attending their own Church and associating with other people who go to that Church who largely hold the same beliefs they do. This extends to fanclubs, school cliques, and more social structures. People don't tend to branch out.
Offline or online the scenario, to me, is largely the same and just as sad.
I agree that polarization is very bad (about trolls vs. yes men in comments). It prevents real discussion.
Perhaps, but consider the following, which will be a reason to encourage off-topic conversations. You have multiple 'similar-interest groups' that you belong to that are orthogonal - my work buddies have different religious views and my fellow congregational members have different occupations than I.
IIRC, Facebook edits what they show you in the feed based on what you click a lot - so what you are provided with tends to be what you agree with. And other non-interactive material make it harder to have conversation. Lastly, I think things done online usually happen in the context of an online community that tends to anchor the conversation there - not necessarily bad, but potentially if the conversation/community is homogenous.
Really the solution is to try and talk about things we disagree about - and with children, it probably happens rarely unless we consciously try to do so.
This depends entirely on what sort of sites you visit. I agree that sites like FB and Twitter that do that are harmful and promote homogeneity.
>Perhaps, but consider the following, which will be a reason to encourage off-topic conversations. You have multiple 'similar-interest groups' that you belong to that are orthogonal - my work buddies have different religious views and my fellow congregational members have different occupations than I.
My friend from Australia whom I play video games with is studying to become a geophysicists. While a lot of what he learns is a bit over my head, I enjoy discussing what he is learning with him to the best of my ability. I'd consider that orthogonal.
Just like you can ask your congregational members about their occupations - you can ask your online friends about theirs as well!
Perhaps its a part of "internet etiquette" that people don't go off-topic as often as they might offline?
I don't deny that the internet might promote homogeneous communities more-so than offline, but by no means is it a limit or barrier that cannot be passed once someone becomes aware of it and desires to change the behavior.
[1] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html