Comments on: iCrazy Interrupted

By: Sonja

Sonja — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 05:01:03 +0000

Oh my, did I need to read this, Callie!

I too have to battle ALL THOSE time-consuming, shallow Internet distractions. From my favorite online news sites, to product reviews of stuff I may or may not buy, to FB, to my favorite blogs, blah, blah, blah.

Seriously, thank you for the reminder. Because when I ease up, and go off the grid, I feel better. This is just the shove I needed.. THANK YOU!

By: Erika

Erika — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 22:59:27 +0000

In the beginning, before there was GUI, there was The Word, all we had was text and slow modems, bulletin-board style dial-up networks, like ‘The Well’, one of the earliest and what ‘Wired Magazine’ named the most influential network in 1993. It was chock-full of burning-brains–writers, geeks, artists, unrepentant hippies, the constant sojourners on the continual path from Beat to Hippie to Punk to Grunge to Baby It’s A Brave New World. The print-outs I have from some of the conferences there are so rich, so open and generous of thought, manifesting in some of the key technologies and publications of what I now think of as Internet Hell.

The medium has devolved.

Where once I came online to escape the imprisonment of self — anonymity in a temporal world, free of visual context, able to interact on that same free plain, the Electronic Frontier, with others of like mind, where thought and patient communication replaced the noise and distraction of the meat-world — I now retreat from. It has become that which I sought to escape, all the yammering substanceless ‘information’, the crowds, and my God! high-school all over again, 24/7–it’s like being in the cafeteria at lunch time. And that was Zuckerberg’s model for ‘Facebook’–the high-school yearbook: a deep subject for such a shallow mind.

I quit all social media (except Twitter,) even my blog. As a writer for over thirty years, just because someone thinks they can write doesn’t make them a writer. The first umpteen years as ‘a writer’ I did what most of us did: lined shelves with rejection letters and re-typed dog-eared manuscripts to re-submit, ever hopeful that one of three always-in-circulation manuscripts would garner me an acceptance letter. Eventually one did, from P.J. O’Rourke, then-editor of ‘National Lampoon,’ and I felt like a ‘real writer.’ I never thought I’d say I miss magazine editors, but here we are online trying to curate’ our information–and that is called ‘editing’ imo. The law of entropy affect everything–that which is amassed has a tendency to break apart, and that which is in pieces tends to coalesce. Maybe that’s why magazines in all formats are a big deal again and self-publishing has a new image. Self-curation.

Remember the Internet is for surfing, not drowning.
Watch out for sharks.
And rip-tides.
Wait thirty minutes after eating before entering the current.

By: Paul | All Groan Up

Paul | All Groan Up — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:07:17 +0000

Love these thoughts and am wrestling with the tension of social media addiction constantly, especially as an author trying to “build my platform” through the very vehicle that can become all-consuming.

By: Basilis

Basilis — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:27:00 +0000

It’s a very serious matter.
We have invite internet to our lives in order to communicate, collect important information e.t.c.
But at the same time we understand that we have to learn (like the learner magician) how not to make it “our life”. If we don’t realize that, then we are slaves to addiction.
As a teacher I have to be extra careful when I see children reaching the limits of internet addiction or gaming addiction or TV addiction, not to mention of course the parents that don’t see the signs yet (or choose not to see them being busy with their works and financial problems e.t.c. Not to mention a very small percent of parents who feel secure knowing that their child is sitting quiet in front of the screen).

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:10:57 +0000

Ah, irony. I first noted this article on Facebook, and then spent long minutes reading it–on the ubiquitous screen, rather than gardening or writing in these early morning hours before iCrazy sets in from too much screen time. I now must promise myself to not continually check to see what other comments are posted about this fine article.

By: Alex McClung

Alex McClung — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:05:43 +0000

The screens are an adjunct to the best action: spending the day with colleagues, striving, competing, contending, collaborating. Spending the evenings and weekends with family; wine, dining, strolling, laughing, chatting, cheering, planning. And time alone; running in the woods, tending the tomatoes, staring at the clouds, listening to the wind blowing in the trees, reading.