I Can't Do Any of that Here Can I?

[nirinia]

Why is it, that when I do LJ, I am always procrastinating? Is it the nature of the friends page that makes it so totally unavoidable when I have things to avoid?

London is looking less and less likely, fuck it all. I need to contain my expectations, or I will end up furious and disappointed. Which leads to nothing good, no concentration, decapitations left and right.

(You've also just experienced what teachers and lecturers alike have been hounding me for for years: my excessive use of punctuation. The commas are there for a reason, you do not leave them out, they are important. It is a matter of style and I get to direct how you read what I write. Commas and semicolons are also the only way of getting my non-stop sentences pronouncable.)

Right, what I was really going to write, is this: I think I have come to the bottom of my postmodern project. What the internet has done is create a connection, and it created serious hypertextuality. Now all I need to do is spend a few weeks in the library, reading up on what everyone else has said about it and make lists of why, exactly, they're wrong. Perhaps this is the way I will change the world, not by cracking open chests and holding hearts, but by wrecking literature.

Comments

[nicetocats.livejournal.com]

It is so easy to lose hours on here when you're meant to be doing other things. Someday I will own a computer smart enough to read my mind and know I'm meant to be procrastinating, and it will only let me do things on it that contribute to the task in hand.

Until then, everything is going to take three times as long as necessary.

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

It's horrid, the time it takes to get things done. I had something almost as good as a mind-reading computer: a program that seriously locked you out of browsers and all other programs you specify, for the time you specify. You simply had to wait till the time was up. Unfortunately, I can't find it.

Long live procrastination!

[leskedrikk.livejournal.com]

How did you do in Exphil? Are you getting only A's in your subjects, I am fucking freaking out.

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

I fucking failed exphil, dude. Kidding, thank god. Got a C, I think. Wrote an insanely sucky paper. Not getting any A's this semester, by the looks of it. Can't be bothered.

[leskedrikk.livejournal.com]

Okay, I am freaking out because it is so much to read. We have like 4 chapters a week (2-300 pages). I am far behind. But not on the papers though luckily. I miss drinking coffee with you. There are lots of goths and emos in trondheim.

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

Ok, wtf? That's insane. I'd never read that much for one course in a week, much less exphil. I miss our coffee as well, we'll have to grab one when I'm in Trondheim. Oh, that's where they went, then?

Don't worry about the reading. Read what you can, ignore the rest, just make sure you have a grasp of what the relevant old men said. You're not required to sit an exam, right?

And I miss your LJ.

[rawthorne.livejournal.com]

I'm 90% certain that LJ (like all social networking sites) was invented to keep us from doing any work. Me, for example, I have four exams to study for. Papers to write. What am I doing? Reading my fpage, blogs, facebook... I have no excuse except that it's so.damn.easy. Even turning on the TV is more effort. The remote is just too far.

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

And you can get tv on-screen. It's a disaster.

[withered-petals.livejournal.com]

In some ways, by creating hypertextuality, the Internet has done more harm than good. Especially when you aim is singleminded devotion to a particular project. Wrecking literature is one of the best ways to change the world, imo. Good luck with that. :)

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

Do you really think so? I think we are in the middle of a transition: the internet is still so new, we are still high on the possibilities of it and don't quite know what to do. We can't quite contain our enthusiasm. In a few years, the traditional story will return more strongly, attention spans will likely grow longer, as well. But then again, I'm biased, I love postmodernism with a passion rivaling my absolute obsession with modernism.

Haha, thank you. It comes with the arrogance, these insane ambitions. 'Careful, my child, with great arrogance comes great ambition, and an overwhelming possibility of failure,' someone ought to have told me. Runs in the family, really. Arrogant bastards the lot of us, all with a suitably ambitious mission.

[withered-petals.livejournal.com]

I think the internet has only increased our ability to get distracted easily. Do you really think that our attention spans will grow longer as we go along? It might be possible if there are delibrate steps made towards that goal but at the rate at which we are going at I'll be surprised if they'll diminish to that of a candy and coffee induced frenzy. I'm not really sure though, these are just my layman observations.

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

I agree, and I think the latest technology in general has decreased it. But, yes, I also think it will eventually turn. It cannot decreased indefinitely, now, can it? If anyone is to get anything done, we must have something of an attention span. Or we will adjust things to fit our new ways. Considering the demand for effectivity, I don't think that is likely. If we don't adjust things ourselves, eventually, I think there will be a call for deliberate measures. At work and in education, to keep our focus and get things done.

And I believe that once the novelty of it wears off, things will adjust accordingly. I'm no expert on the subject either, but our guesses are as good as anyone else's. Until we see what happens.