WNPR & Your Public Media contributor Heather Brandon has accepted our challenge to complete a media fast. She'll be abstaining from all media Monday, August 1 - Thursday, August 4 and will be interviewed, along with Tom Cooper, author of Fast Media, Media Fast: How to Clear Your Mind and Invigorate Your Life In an Age of Media Overload about her fast on the Thursday, August 4 edition of "Where We Live." No internet surfing, no television, no video games. This is her diary.
Preparing to Fast: Entry 2
When I told my kids I would be fasting from media for a few days, their reaction was, “Oh, great!” I was a little taken aback. “Well, it’s not like I will completely disconnect from the computer,” I offered, finding myself oddly defensive. “I’ll still write, and check emails, and will still have a little work to do.”
“Yeah, but at least you won’t be able to check Twitter all the time,” my younger son said, “so we’ll be able to talk to you.” Indeed. Am I that unavailable for talking? I suppose it could be so. Gosh, kid. Then he picked up his iPod and started playing the latest Harry Potter game app.
Even while media tools plug us into each other over a distance, they can disconnect us at close range. How many times have you sat at a table or around a living room where everyone, or nearly so, had some kind of electronic device in their hands or on their lap? And how irritating was the distraction?
Children get the short end of this stick, as well as well-intended adults who put their devices aside (or never had them to begin with), only to be met with expressionless, eyes-turned-down looks, and non-hearing ears. A random outburst of laughter emerges from someone caught up in an online conversation, and without looking up, another person mutters, “What?” My kids have seen this play out several times, so it’s no surprise to me that they would revel in a chance to see me abstain from Twitter alone.
My husband thinks I’m way more addicted to streams of media chatter than he is, so fasting will be tough for me. He seems amused in advance by my attempt to resist. But my neighbor Rand Cooper thinks my husband would have a harder time disconnecting than I would. That, in turn, amuses me. We would all like to point the finger elsewhere, and say, “I could quit anytime if I wanted to. Just let me check my feeds and email one last time.”
When I shared news of my fast with my mother, she asked where I’ll get my developing news. “It’s always impressed me that you get it so quickly from Twitter,” she said. “If not there, then from where, in this next week?” My mother follows my Twitter feed, so she knows how hard I lean on it for information. Where will I get it? I might ...not.
In his new book, Fast Media, Media Fast, Dr. Thomas Cooper (no relation to my neighbor) suggests three approaches to media fasting: a blackout and total unplugging, removing all media from your life; a practical fast, so work and emergency connections are maintained; or a customized media diet, based on your own addictions and need for selective elimination.
I’ll be doing a practical and slightly customized fast: no Facebook, Twitter, iPad/iPod/video games, TV, or online browsing (unless work-related). Allowed: texting for informational purposes, newspapers, and radio. Dr. Cooper suggests that electronic mass media fasting can reasonably leave intact one-on-one connections like email and phone calls. The goal is to eliminate media that “could potentially homogenize thought,” he wrote in an email.
Dr. Cooper predicts several beneficial effects from this. I will find more hours in my day for reflection, creativity, sleep, play, family, community, art, and spirituality. I’ll also sharpen my perceptive ability and memory, and think more for myself rather than in slogans and jingles. I’ll create more of my own media, rather than consume it. Enslaving habits and mindsets will be behind me. I’ll become more selective about life choices, relationships, career, and my own relationship with mass consumption of information. I’ll be more of service, and I may rediscover nature and a balanced life, developing talents I have neglected. (Cooper, 50-51) In other words: I will transcend! Or something.
Previous Entry: Saying Goodbye to Facebook, Twitter
