Here on Christmas Eve, there are waves. Waves of greetings, lights, cookies, meringues, gifts, sounds, smells, bills,worries and rushes. We have timers going off and doorbells ringing. Could we borrow some cream of tartar? Where is that gift I hid? Have I got them all or, like last year's Easter eggs, will some remain hidden for years to come?
A friend wrote that she shied away from Kindle from fear of being overwhelmed by books. The young novelist Helen Smith confessed months ago to buying way more books, so inexpensive and so quickly downloaded, than she had time to read. Maybe later.
Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, after carting out the wrappings we made only to be destroyed (affirming our awareness of the transitory nature of everything), maybe then we will take some time to read. Ha! Read? But then, we will fall ever further behind on our listening to TED talks. TED talks are really good! Gotta listen. Gotta! Ha! Then, I will fall behind on my Great Courses. Have several that have sat patiently on the shelf for several years waiting to be heard. Have several in video disk form that are even older and even more expensive but since they take longer and narrow what can be done concurrently, such as drive a car, they are even older.
And Twitter? Don't get me started. I have developed the habit of reading through one set of Tweets without downloading any of the dozen that come in while I am reading. Of course, sharing is a big time-consumer. A good Tweet, like a good passage in all those good books, can be shared. Passages can be shared with a couple of keys to my followers on Twitter (probably ¾ of whom I have never met in any other way) but good Tweets from others need to be emailed to myself and then relayed to the dozens of poor, isolated people who never get any canned meat spam and are hungry for my selections of admittedly really smart and with-it people on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the US and its top, bottom and middle, too.
Don't forget Netflix, Amazon, Vudu and the steadily increasing alternatives to these sources, all interested in your streaming movies. I just read that Redbox will be offering movies streams soon. There is little difference between streaming a movie and watching it on DVD except that the streamed one arrives at your screen with very little time and effort.
While I feel my overwhelmedness is fairly strong in all these areas, I have not neglected the Google/Bing (and 30,000+ other search programs) to explore all areas of possible growth or present frustration or limitation on the trillions of web pages. I use Google hourly and am rather faithfully overwhelmed by its results.
David Weinberger is right: it is all too big to know! See? I am pretty well overwhelmed and I am aware of it. I am striving for a deeper level of overwhelmedness all the time. What more do you want?
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
A friend wrote that she shied away from Kindle from fear of being overwhelmed by books. The young novelist Helen Smith confessed months ago to buying way more books, so inexpensive and so quickly downloaded, than she had time to read. Maybe later.
Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, after carting out the wrappings we made only to be destroyed (affirming our awareness of the transitory nature of everything), maybe then we will take some time to read. Ha! Read? But then, we will fall ever further behind on our listening to TED talks. TED talks are really good! Gotta listen. Gotta! Ha! Then, I will fall behind on my Great Courses. Have several that have sat patiently on the shelf for several years waiting to be heard. Have several in video disk form that are even older and even more expensive but since they take longer and narrow what can be done concurrently, such as drive a car, they are even older.
And Twitter? Don't get me started. I have developed the habit of reading through one set of Tweets without downloading any of the dozen that come in while I am reading. Of course, sharing is a big time-consumer. A good Tweet, like a good passage in all those good books, can be shared. Passages can be shared with a couple of keys to my followers on Twitter (probably ¾ of whom I have never met in any other way) but good Tweets from others need to be emailed to myself and then relayed to the dozens of poor, isolated people who never get any canned meat spam and are hungry for my selections of admittedly really smart and with-it people on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the US and its top, bottom and middle, too.
Don't forget Netflix, Amazon, Vudu and the steadily increasing alternatives to these sources, all interested in your streaming movies. I just read that Redbox will be offering movies streams soon. There is little difference between streaming a movie and watching it on DVD except that the streamed one arrives at your screen with very little time and effort.
While I feel my overwhelmedness is fairly strong in all these areas, I have not neglected the Google/Bing (and 30,000+ other search programs) to explore all areas of possible growth or present frustration or limitation on the trillions of web pages. I use Google hourly and am rather faithfully overwhelmed by its results.
David Weinberger is right: it is all too big to know! See? I am pretty well overwhelmed and I am aware of it. I am striving for a deeper level of overwhelmedness all the time. What more do you want?
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
