This then is day one of ten without the news. It doesn’t feel a great deal different from yesterday except I missed listening to the two daily Economist podcasts I would usually listen to while driving. Not checking the BBC feels like absolutely zero loss which is quite a pleasant and reassuring feeling and without access to my Facebook wall I am unlikely to come up with any articles from independent or alternate media sources. Life doesn’t feel much different then as I said after one day, but then I wouldn’t expect it to, it’s after five or six days that I’m curious to see the affects.
This is not my first time without any access to the news. There have been plenty of opportunities for me to be ignorant of the worlds ignorance’s when travelling and either being away from the internet or just with better things to do. It is probably important then to get this straight; there are many more important things in life than knowing what is going on in the world, or a version of the world people you don’t know want you to see. When I have been away from the internet for a bit though my first thought is not to check the world or local news but is to find out what the score in the football was. That’s my weakness, everything else is secondary.
These moments of no internet are incredibly rare in modern times. We have access to the internet in ways unthinkable just ten to fifteen years ago. I do remember a time before mobile phones let alone phones with all this infinitely accessible information. I have no idea of the figures and will perhaps expose my ignorance but I imagine the majority of houses in the UK have wifi or at least access to a neighbours. Failing that a trip to McDonalds is the norm for some and even public transport has wifi these days. We’ve come along way from dial-up connections and it taking a minute to download one image.
It is probably a good thing. Long term it is unclear but then what the people of the future think is good will probably be different to what I do now. We apparently have less ability to remember information because we have Google as a surrogate memory bank. Our lack of real face to face connection has been shown to create feelings of loneliness which is surely the opposite of what a world of connectivity is supposed to do. Maybe we need to refine our understanding of the nuances of connection. On the flip side, unless we switch off our devices which can genuinely be really difficult, we are never fully alone and able to relax in our own company. We seem to be in a middle ground that does nobody any favours.
But I started out with discussing taking a break from the constant barrage of news not a one-sided take on the ills of technology. The news then makes us excitable in all the wrong ways and feeds into some primordial survival network going on in our brain. It undoubtedly leads to increases in anxiety and it’s only real benefit seems to be in allowing for a good conversation with someone about, well, the news. Yet being able to share information of massacres, injustices and private and state corruption is invaluable even if it does get drowned out by all the rest of the bullshit. In these ten days though I’ll be fine, as will the world without my observations for I suspect it is true; a falling tree does make a sound in the woods even when nobody is there to hear it.
Observations and Misunderstandings 