Re: [newtech-1] My Year Without The Internet - Paul Miller is interviewed by CNN
| From: | Jonathan J. |
| Sent on: | Monday, May 13, 2013, 8:05 AM |
LOL - talk about a thread that has been going on 2000+ years. This is just classic Asceticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism
He's getting both spiritual enlightenment from doing without something and admiration from others for doing without.
The Internet, and all technology in general, is the How of our lives, not the who, what, why, where or when. You can go to a library, reach for a bookshelf, or pick up the phone to replace Wikipedia. Email, phone, letter writing, sky writing, all can replace Facebook. The Internet is just a giant tool allowing us to accomplish things without constraint of location, physical space, and temporal synchronicity (the requirement that you be live witness to an event - whether that's your friend speaking or information that is posted).
So for me, denying yourself access to a tool is foolish. That actually applies to many tech purists. If Visual Basic effectively produces the same Windows app in 10% the time, should I gain points just because I wrote it in C++. If Ruby is easier to code and has more Gems than Python, or Go, should I automatically choose the language with the more difficult syntax? How about Windows over Linux? Debian over Linux? SQL over NoSQL? Hand coding SQL versus using a Modeling Tool?
So for me, denying yourself access to a tool is foolish. That actually applies to many tech purists. If Visual Basic effectively produces the same Windows app in 10% the time, should I gain points just because I wrote it in C++. If Ruby is easier to code and has more Gems than Python, or Go, should I automatically choose the language with the more difficult syntax? How about Windows over Linux? Debian over Linux? SQL over NoSQL? Hand coding SQL versus using a Modeling Tool?
There's this recurring theme that by denying yourself some piece of technology, that somehow makes the technology you use more 'noble.'
It can also go in reverse. Some people brag about using the latest framework, when a simple batch file would have done the equivalent job just fine. That's why Microsoft Word 2013 on my machine takes just as long to open as did Microsoft Word 1.0 on my green and black Compaq with 64KB RAM.
Jonathan Jaffe | Founding Owner
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On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Mark Nyon <[address removed]> wrote:
I excerpted the passages from the article that speak the most to me:"And to be honest, and I don't know if I'm just being a snob, but I'm not as entranced by funny cat videos anymore. I really like vacuum cat and my buddy has a blog, didntmeantopost.tumblr.com, and I really like his selective picks of GIFs. But for the most part I'm just not that entranced by it at all.Will old habits come back over time?To be honest, I already feel like I'm using the Internet a little too much or the wrong way. I'm just a blob existing on the Internet instead of getting into the Internet, using it as a really good tool, and then putting it away so I can focus on writing or something....Do you plan on using the Internet differently now that you're back?I want to prioritize family and friends, and productivity and learning, over just generally consuming and being entertained. And that takes work because the Internet is so happy to entertain you. I want to find a way to use the Internet in that way, but unfortunately I'm really out of practice, so I kind of have to learn it from scratch. I don't think I got better at using the Internet by not using it."
This speaks to me using the internet as a tool with intent as opposed to getting on it just to be entertained. I'd like to feel that when I'm done using it for the day, I've learned something, reached a goal, helped someone or gotten helped in return. There's too much time I've spent doing things that don't matter much here, and that wasn't what got me excited about the internet in the first place..02
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