Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
One thing that seems to drive interest in blogs is newness. Like headline news we only care about what is now. But keeping up with the latest ramblings of your favorite twenty-something cyber-curmudgeon is only the skin of the apple. Surfing yesterday's, or last year's, space can bring inspiration, can trigger the production of that next essay you have been waiting to have pulled from you like a boil you've been waiting to lance. At least that's what happened to me today when I visited Rick Crawford's vroop.com this morning. (I was actually looking for examples of ways to make my blogs look better.)
Back in the fog shrouded past of January 2004 Rick blogged a bit that could have been posted any time after 1995, a bit that will be relevant for decades to come. The overt complaint is about programmer's block, a code slinging analog of writer's block. But he bullets up a little list of specific complaints that quite put the finger on part of what is doing the blocking: Loss of focus, Attractive Distractions, Procrastination, Resentment at simple linear tasks. I see all of these as symptoms of web poisoning. There's a piece from alertbox, that I think is relevant here, although I develop the idea a little differently than the discussion in the article.
The web is addictive, much in the way a slot-machine is addictive. Pscyh research shows that the way to get conistent behavior is with inconsistent rewards. When pushing a lever always delivers food the rat pushes less often than when the lever pays off randomly. Now apply that to surfing the web or even checking your email (especially if you've subscribed to a tasty list or two.) There is a highly inconsistent reward structure; sometimes your surfing and reading will bring wild rewards of delight, emotional or intellectual jackpots. Often as not, if you were to keep track click-by-click, your surfing and reading is like dropping your nickle in the slot, pulling the arm, and watching the little wheels spin and getting nothing.
This ties back to the observations in the alertbox article. We surf for jackpots. And the medium itself, the web, with it's formatted links visually punching you in the nose with the difference between boring old data versus something that might take you to your next jackpot, reinforces this Attention Deficit Disorder addiction.
So it ain't just you, Rick, or me, it's all of us, it's the nature of our medium. It's increasingly less about Attention Deficit Disorder and increaslingly more about abuse of our thirst for valuable information by would-be purveyors of same. The web can be every bit as much a fruitless time-sink as television, but because of the one-armed-bandit effect of hyperlinks it is all the more compelling (and not nearly so socially approved...yet.)
As for what to do? Good question. I would think a regimen of hearty physical exercise, enforced "step-away-from-the-keyboard" breaks, and a routinized religious/spiritual/deep-breathing/meditative practice every 60-120 minutes would be a big step in the right direction. I pride myself on not owning a television, because I know how many of my prescious finite heartbeats I would waste every week staring vacuously at it. Will the time come when I boast similarly of not being online? Not likely, not while I'm still committed to seeing the web as an ever improving method for the sharing and stimulating of new ideas.
But there are days when I wish it was about sweeping the temple and stacking the rice bags.
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