information saturation versus the ducks

i spend a lot of time in front of the computer, and a lot of that time i spend in sort of a crazed state of information saturation. i often find myself reading an article or two, while holding two or more chats with people, and monitoring a couple of irc chatrooms. if it’s early enough in the day, i’ll have a stock ticker cruising as well. or have a vid or audio conversation in progress.
on saturday, when jee and steen and tara and hugh and i were sitting in the marina, jee joked that i might find it difficult to be away from the internet for the duration of the flight to new zealand. it was pretty funny at the time, but i have been thinking about it a bit. today i grabbed the book i am reading, cryptonomicon, and headed down to the boate to cover the sails and take the motor out of the water.
i sat there for a few hours, reading and thinking and enjoying quite a different pace of information absorption. i need to do this more often.
the ducks kept circling, following each other around, up and down the rows of boats. there is a reason why they are the frequent personalities of cartoons. while there are usually some profound feelings inspired by a lone bird soaring in the sky, when you get a duck or two paddling around in the water in front of you, you can’t help but feel you are getting a zen lesson in absurdity.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

2 responses to “information saturation versus the ducks”

  1. bret Avatar
    bret

    get one computer hooked up with internet
    get one computer hooked up with no internet

    figure out which one you are productive on.

    i’d guess it is the non-net one.

  2. Jondi Avatar

    I agree with Bret. When I need to get some writing done, I go to the cafe to escape the internet. Our music studio isn’t connected either.

    (but when I’m at the cafe I still half-heartedly yet compulsively try to hack into a private wireless network in range)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.