Confession: I used all those exclamation marks to drive my friends, family, and fellow-writing/publishing nerds nuts.
I hope you’ve heard of the 100 things challenge, wherein a Guy Named Dave decided to fight American-style consumerism and live a life of simplicity, characterized by joyfulness and thoughtfulness. It’s a good challenge, and it got me thinking:
A lot (okay, most) of my engagement with the internet is consumption driven. I consume information of many sorts. Some intelligent. Some not so. Some useful. Some absolutely useless.
How useful is information if it never actually gets used?
I’ve started asking myself, how useful is information, though, if it never actually gets used? It’s the proverbial tree-in-the-woods: If nothing is ever created from the synthesis of the information taken in, was the information ever truly received? (Answer: Ken Jennings?)
More ctrl-w and less ctrl-r
So, I’m going to challenge myself to use as much or more of my time creating than I use consuming information. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I imagine that it will be more ctrl-w and less ctrl-r (for non geeks, ctrl-w closes a window, while ctrl-r refreshes it). Ooh. That could be a cool t-shirt.
It’s been said (that means I have no source, but I heard an old guy say it once,) that never before has a people had access to so much information. What will we do with it? I’m going to try to stop (over)consuming and create something.