I get emails [forwarded to me] all the time from my dad about the “good old days” and “old-fashioned values,” about the price of bread in the 50’s and how one wouldn’t dare be anything but fully compliant with authority figures, from pointer-wielding schoolmarm to uniformed milkman. And with no television to hypnotize us (let alone computers to bedevil us), life was simpler then. Sure, a few people jumped out of windows when they tuned into the middle of War of the Worlds broadcast on radio, but generally low-techiness was next to godliness.
As we cannot easily turn the clock back (and don’t even get me started with daylight savings time tonight), some of us find ourselves bloated from a high-pixel diet of infinite information and over-connectedness. From thirty-somethings to middle schoolers, the passive/aggressive addiction to computers, video games, cell phones and ipods is pervasive (as evidenced by a crowd of friends walking and texting at the same time).
For us in mid-life, we’re fortunate to know first-hand what it’s like to have little or no electronic distraction. Granted, we were kids, but many of us can remember spending quiet, often involuntary time with a book after being denied extra TV time.
But back to the present. If you don’t want to immerse in the medieval art of book reading, there’s always a newspaper or magazine to graze on. If you own one or more oversized coffee table books, with spectacular photos of the natural world, kick back with one of those, on a rainy Saturday (like today), unless you have a blog post to complete. There’s all sorts of print media to enjoy, from the back of a cereal box at breakfast (granted, an underutilized medium – should be a showcase for short story writers), to hardware and gadget catalogs in the bathroom (where using a laptop is just not right) to standing at your mailbox in your bathrobe and sorting through your paper junk mail.
My roundabout point is that print is the perfect means to escape electronic tyranny. New York Times columnist Mark Bittman wrote about the “secular sabbath” in a recent article but really he’s talking about a regular technological retreat, where you avoid the internet, email, cell phone and maybe even your ipod (and I’d include your TV’s translucent, on-screen menu). That fine if you’ve a need to play complete information ascetic, but if your leisure time includes welcoming news or new concepts, then print might be your savior. Even at work there’s opportunity for respite. Put your dirty feet up on your even dirtier desk and spend time with a well-crafted brochure, one without stock photos, one that doesn’t treat you like an idiot, one that a designer like me sweated over, busting my stones to keep you from cartwheeling it into the trash before robotically turning to your keyboard for googled results.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
Karen Halls
Love the literature on the cereal box idea. Think that it might be worth launching something like…Robert Frost-ed Flakes or Cheeri-O’Henry’s.
Carol – you’re always thinking, aren’t you!
Even if the cereals don’t get new author-inspired brands, as you proposed, they could be “serial cereals” with continuing stories each month (and there’s many public domain classics to choose from). Who knows…might even inspire someone to pick up a book.
I feel similarly about using pre-movie time at the theaters, not for cheesy local real estate agent advertising, but for aspiring animators and artists, perhaps funded by advertisers.