Thursday, September 25, 10:21 AM
Jeez, is it already almost 10:30? I was so sure I’d be at the keyboard by 10. A few minutes before 10, I was almost done clearing my inbox of the detritus that I’d let accumulate by mostly ignoring it the day before. And then one thing and another… and now it’s 10:21. Another half hour I’ll never get back…
See, that’s the quandary.
Time slips by in tiny increments… one small distraction after another, and before you know it a quarter, a half, a whole hour has slipped by and there’s nothing to show for it except time spent with the RTG – The Random Trivia Generator.
The Random Trivia Generator is not just Facebook. It’s the whole Universe of digital distractions. Here we see the downside in the interconnectedness of all things. Maybe it starts with an indispensable tool like e-mail, which by now is mostly littered with e-newsletters of varying degrees of actual interest, each with their own links to something brighter and shinier beyond. Once you’re in the browser, there are more links, most of them of the “link bait” variety that promise even deeper satisfaction if you just give into your curiosity and… click here.
I’d snuck into Facebook for a minute. Just to clear an item I’d left in my inbox from yesterday, a link I needed to post to The 1861 Project’s Facebook page, which these days serves as the Project’s website. Since the actual website attracts so little traffic – and conversely the Facebook page gathers whatever interest there actually is in the project – we just redirected the domain to the Facebook page and we “engage” our “audience” there.
Tales of distraction: I’m suddenly tempted to drop the developing stream of consciousness that was forming here in order to follow up a phone call I made a few minutes ago with an text msg. But when I open the phone I discover that an e-mail I thought I’d sent from my phone hadn’t actually been sent. It was stuck in a digital limbo called “Outbox.” So I had to (?) drill down into my mailboxes to find the unsent message and attempt to “Send” again.
And now I’m tempted to check the device again to see if the message has sent. And that’s when I realize:
This is where our lives go. Read More