{"id":1803,"date":"2009-07-27T01:05:16","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T23:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/?p=1803"},"modified":"2009-07-27T01:05:16","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T23:05:16","slug":"itard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/itard\/","title":{"rendered":"iTard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The past five years I’ve had portable audio players with me much of the time. Filled with audiobooks, podcasts and lectures there is hardly a minute where I can’t be found with earplugs. I’ve grown so accustomed to having them in that I sometimes wear them without anything playing. It’s not as if I experience phantom pains if I don’t wear them, but I hardly register their presence anymore, and the second I’m not reading I’ll start listening to Science in the city<\/a> or Arts and Ideas<\/a> or any of the other 40 odd podcasts I’m subscribing to.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago I killed my mp3 player with excessive volts. Later the same day I walked to the store and heard birds for the first time in a good while. Their chirping reminded me of the time I was wasting. Every minute I walked without headphones on was a minute I wasn’t learning stuff<\/em>. I remember walking faster only to get back to some sort of content<\/em>. Too broke to pay I bought an iPod on credit from the store I was working at the next day.<\/p>\n

Of course this has nothing to do with actual learning<\/em>. It’s not even a pursuit of trivia or satiation of a particular interest. It’s the idea that time ought not to be wasted and by learning stuff you become better \u2013 whatever “better” means \u2013\u00a0and becoming better is better than not becoming better.<\/p>\n

In the end I find that much of what I listen to doesn’t stick; I’ve become a good reference for references, but don’t retain much information, nor any big picture stuff<\/em> aquired through osmosis. The articles below deal with this and they are worthy of your attention if you can manage reading for longer than three minutes.<\/p>\n

\"hus_stewie\"<\/p>\n

\"klippa\"<\/p>\n

He sees our distraction as a full-blown epidemic\u2014a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. He compares it, in fact, to smoking. \u201cPeople aren\u2019t aware what\u2019s happening to their mental processes,\u201d he says, \u201cin the same way that people years ago couldn\u2019t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2192 New York, Sam Anderson: In defense of distraction<\/a><\/p>\n

His thinking, he said, has taken on a \u201cstaccato\u201d quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. \u201cI can\u2019t read War and Peace anymore,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI\u2019ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2192 The Atlantic Online, Nicholas Carr: Is Google making us stupid?<\/a><\/p>\n

The Internet, paradoxically, empowers both the individual and the state. On the one hand, it allows people who had no way to express themselves before, whether for political or economic reasons, an outlet to do so. The Net also makes it much easier to find out what people in other countries are thinking. On the other hand, it gives governments a better view into their citizens\u2019 activities. There\u2019s a danger that some people might mistake the apparent anonymity of the Net for true anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u2192 The Sun, Arnie Cooper: Computing the cost; Nicholas Carr on how the Internet is rewiring our brains<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past five years I’ve had portable audio players with me much of the time. Filled with audiobooks, podcasts and lectures there is hardly a minute where I can’t be found with earplugs. I’ve grown so accustomed to having them in that I sometimes wear them without anything playing. It’s not as if I experience … Continue reading iTard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,279],"tags":[849,433,846,821,723,847,851,845,850],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doodles","category-found","category-photography","tag-disctraction","tag-efficiency","tag-ipod","tag-knowledge","tag-lecture","tag-mp3-player","tag-multitasking","tag-stupid","tag-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}