12 Apr 2012

In praise of wasting time online....reflections on pottering about on social media.


Picture it if you will.  An unexpected day of leisure, not a care in the world (or at least ones you can't throw a blanket over, shut the door or just plain ignore), no particular plans or obligations, everyone else is occupied, kettle boiled and a pot of tea awaiting.... what is one to do??

In all the white noise, prognostications, significance, angst, immediacy and suggested eternal connection that is the crazy wacky, brave new world of social media, is a perhaps little heralded development with life online...the certain small pleasures of wasting time online!

Psychologists tell us about the concept of 'flow'.  When you're doing something, but are not conscious of time passing.  It usually happens when you're pursuing something you rather enjoy and have some measure of control over it, like wandering through a newly discovered second-hand bookstore, finding sea-shells along the beach, re-organising your record collection, that unexerting bit of inconsequential but still nifty DIY....the list is endless.

A few years ago, I recall reading a particularly charming piece on BBC News online (of course) on 'The Joys of Pottering'.  The article in this case referred to pottering around the garden, though I was always taken by the way it portrayed the unhurried sense of interested activity, when you don't especially have to do anything else.

Yet in the smart and shiny digital age, we're all so slick and connected.  According to our social media world, with our status updates, clever 160 character bon mots and cutting-edge mash-ups, we're all mini-celebrities in our own drama series, apparently on the verge of always doing something terribly interesting and important.  Gotta be online and feeding the cybermachine all day baby, coz otherwise you'll miss out...

But what if you don't.  And just for clarity, I'm not suggesting ditching your laptop, tablet, smartphone, music device and GPS and living the electronic equivalent of a life by candle-light and reading improving texts, hand-calligraphied by medieval scribes.  However what about gentle, meandering pottering about the internet?  In the olden days of the interweb I guess this was called surfing the net, though these days, the repertoire has been expanded.

As preparation for this blog, I started jotting down some of the different ways one can do this and wasn't sure whether to be impressed at naturally, the depth and perceptiveness of my reflections or concerned at just how easily I can be distracted!

Cup of tea at the ready, it can begin by glancing through a few status updates, then noticing some-one you haven't heard about in ages and checking out their more recent story (oh, I'm not sure they've aged well you think - look I didn't say it was about being beatifically generous and all-knowing!).  This can be followed by actually reading up on some links for once, including a news story where your dander gets sufficiently up that you get lost in all the reader comments and maybe contribute some choice remarks of your own.

Reading done, thoughts turn to music and for once, you do check-out the 'artists you might like' recommendations on your music player.  Mmmh, download some tunes (legally, nacht), whereupon you turn to YouTube and start viewing the clips of your new music discoveries.  Which in turn reminds you of, who were they again, from years ago and sets you off on another electronic field trip...

As an aside, it's intriguing YouTube, iTunes and the rest.  What were once songs, programmes or videos, very occasionally stumbled across by chance and often bringing back memories, perhaps with a wry grin.  They're now always accessible and here's the thing.  In a world of instant recall, do we really have a past?  Are our memories, now simply our present?  And our history, no longer the other country of years-long distance?

However, that pot of tea is getting cold and a vague idea occurs of needing a new piece of kit for morris dancing.  And so ensues a whole, vital session of online shopping.  Only having a look around mind, getting a sense of prices, you think.  Important research really.

And so it goes.  I could recommend that really this is a subject requiring further research.  But that would defeat the entire purpose of online pottering wouldn't it!

2 comments:

  1. Pottering hmmm turns out I to am easily distracted. But while the term pottering infers a laid back meandering though the net I’m more like Alice in wonderland. I’m easily distracted, wander miles from my original path and consequently end up lost and frustrated. When I’m looking for something I always seem to find other things of interest – kind of a grass is always greener type syndrome- that have nothing to do with my original task. I though I give just relaxing and not worrying about what I was suppose to be doing a try, just go where I wanted. Could not think where to start! Totally hopeless I suppose I'll just wait for the white rabbit. The web is full of companies just waiting to temp the Alices of the world to their web pages.

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  2. Indeed and as for what social media does for the whole repertoire of study avoidance.....that said, unhurried time can also be important for creative thinking, whether that about communications, solving a tricky policy/comms problem, writing dissertations....so I say embrace your inner Alice!

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