Ted D.
Hour 1: Online.
Websites: YouTube, Discord, The Washington Post, LiveScience, CNN, Twitter, Wikipedia
Okay, let’s mindlessly click through my YouTube recommendations. Okay, a 7-second meme, how about a real video next?
Okay, here’s our first real video: “The 2020 Bootleg Bonanza” by DankPods. Wait, it’s 26 minutes long. New rule: only watching 5 minutes per video.
Also, I’ll ask some friends on Discord to send some articles to read. Our goal here is to actively look for information, right?
According to this video, the iPods have processors that turn digital things to analog sound.
Okay, let’s read some of the articles I was sent now.
Myanmar coup, military has taken over. Aung San Suu Kyi, she’s why it happened. Myanmar military, genocide to Rohingya Muslims, Min Aung Hlaing is dictator. Democracy or dictatorship – who will win?
Orangutans. Nice, human-like, Indonesian, aggressive, territorial. Females give birth every 8 years. Live to up to 70 years in captivity. Critically endangered.
GameStop stocks…
Okay, wow. Only 15 minutes in and it feels like it’s been an hour already. (Also, there were 2 other (parts of) videos I watched in the background but I was not paying attention at all.)
Let’s switch gears and watch some reaction videos, that way I get to watch my information rather than having to read it with this junk in the background. Why was my original idea any good?
Okay, I’m not learning anything from this video at all. This is just pure entertainment. To be fair, though, it’s not meant to inform.
Let’s watch this gaming video I started watching earlier today. Also, let’s lift the 5-minutes-per-video “rule” because I want to finish this and there’s 8 minutes left in it.
Okay, so somehow I flipped over to Discord and followed this Twitter link and apparently Abigail Thorn is trans! Congratulations to her on coming out!
Now let’s watch this new Half as Interesting video. “Why the east ends of most cities are poorer” sounds like an interesting topic.
Update: it’s because of the wind.
Let’s watch another DankPods video now.
Okay, I’m bored with this, let’s watch Explosions&Fire. I came into this wanting to learn stuff.
Explosive polymers, this is an interesting topic…
Glass transition temperature, I never learned about this in my Chem classes, I might look it up on Wikipedia. This is interesting.
Also, red fuming nitric acid sets lab gloves on fire, and there’s an explosive polymer called nitrocellulose.
Glass transition temperature was explained better in the video than on Wikipedia anyways, basically it’s when the polymer turns all soft and into a plasticizer.
This Veritasium video looks interesting, wait the comments are saying it’s bad, so I won’t watch it.
I’ll just watch another reaction video for a few minutes, I really need to spend some time away from the information machine right now.
Hour 2: Outside.
Location: Rolling Valley neighborhood in Springfield, Virginia, and trail leading to Pohick Creek
I step outside, and am immediately in the moment. I tune out any sort of anthropogenic noise, and try to become close with nature.
I grab twigs from the sidewalk and snap them. Sometimes I have to twist them a bit to get them to snap – those are the twigs that feel more rubbery.
I realize I’ve forgotten my notebook at home. I instead, begrudgingly, use the Notes app on my phone to collect observations, making sure not to connect to the Internet, and using it only as one would use a notebook.
I see a bush in front of someone’s house. It appears to be dead, and has leaves that are shaped oddly. It stands out to me in the suburban environment.
The wind picks up. I begin to feel cold.
There do appear to be some strange patches on the snow, but closer inspection reveals they are simply in fact ice.
I find the old path which leads to the river. No one has bothered to shovel it, but I go down anyway.
I think about how the ice, snow, and mud is slippery as I go down.
There are footprints on the trail, some human, some animal. I follow them as I descend.
Upon arriving to the river, I notice a profound lack of life, which leads to some existential thoughts on life and death.
I walk along the river bank, attempting to find life. I find it in the form of a seed pod.
I grab a stick from the snow and attempt to crack the seed pod open to find whatever is stored within.
After attempting to do this and failing for a while, I leave both the pod and stick on a fallen tree branch and head back up the river path.
I go further down the road and come to a valley, wherein there is an even more profound lack of non-anthropogenic life.
I climb down the snowy slope assisted by some plants and come across a lump of snow filled with leaves.
I disassemble it and throw the pieces into the valley in an attempt to find something of value within, and find nothing but a triangular piece of wood.
I carve a message into the snow:
“THE EARTH IS ALIVE AND LISTENING”
Then, I leave the wood atop a drift of snow and return back along the road from whence I came.
Synthesis
This experience taught me about how differently information is conveyed in the media of online vs. natural environment. In the online environment, there is a certain control that you have over the information you receive and the density thereof that you do not have online. However, the online environment was overwhelming at times, and I felt like I was not retaining a lot of the information that I was exposed to. In nature, it was a lot easier to absorb the information due to it being provided at a much slower pace and overall being much more still.
This was not really comparable to Bill McKibben’s experience – I feel like the online environment was certainly not as dumbed-down as the television was. As the age of the Internet is upon us, so is the age of information. However, information does not equate to the experience of being in nature.