Image via Wikipedia"People used to talk about boredom as though it were a thing, not a mood—a sort of physical object. It “descended” on you. You “escaped” from it, you “fled” it. Or you “dispelled” it, as though it were a fog. This wasn’t always easy to do; sometimes the boredom was just too thick, too “heavy.”
Boredom Is Extinct - Magazine - The Atlantic
There have been some posts in this blog lately, linking to the distracting influences of social media, and this is just another one in that line. Walter Kirn has a short incisive piece at The Atlantic which takes a look at this question, and decides may be we have lost some of our creativity, but Twitter, Facebook, iPad, Blackberry and more such technologies have liberated us from boredom.
Roger Ebert has written a great article, "Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!", which makes you feel no matter what they say, Twitter definitely is a force for the good. I found it moving, obviously he is writing from the heart, and he owes up that he is addicted to Twitter, and actively looks for stuff to tweet about. He also outlines his basic rules of tweeting-
"My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting."
It is obvious that Ebert is not doing this to escape boredom or loneliness, this is a passion that has found expression in tiny bits of information.
Whether the internet is a distracting, destructive phenomenon does not seem to be as big a question as it was- but I am sure of this- people who are creative and love to communicate make best use of it. Internet seems to focus their interests into a body of work that not only stands alone by itself, but also actively helps them seek and engage the people they are addressing. It is like a conversation that has matured into a lecture.
