Category: Two Hours Spring 2021

Kerry Mulligan

 Unlike Bill McKibben, my hour of media consumption revolved around social media and news applications. I refrain from watching the news on live tv unless something breaking is in development. Tuesday 2/2 at 10:00 pm I started my journey on social media by opening my old pal Snapchat up. I responded to a few friends via video recording and looked at other people’s stories. I got into a brief debate with one of my friends exchanging a fairly straightforward back and forth conversation. This lasted 10 minutes. Next, I opened my favorite, albeit toxic application, Twitter. I scrolled for a minute losing track of time after deep-diving into a few different threads. Before I knew it 20 minutes had passed. I then proceeded to the news app after remembering an article I came across on Twitter. It was an interesting piece about “How Wind Turbines Could be Recycled and Reused” by Christopher McFadden. I didn’t understand some of the technical terminologies but I found it to informative reading. Lastly, I turned to Instagram and tik tok for my remaining 20 minutes changing a few times intermittently between the 2 channels. I posted to my story on Instagram and answered a few DM’s while watching a few tik tok videos in between to refresh my short attention span. 

    This morning at 9:00 am I tried to receive 1 hour of naturalistic media free intake. Unfortunately, we got off to a bad start. Usually, when I go outside to hike/walk I’ll bring my phone and air pods so I can listen to an audiobook or music. As I started my walk towards Lake Mercer with my dog I realized that I had put on my workout playlist for the first five minutes. I turned it off and tried staying attuned to the outdoors and my wonderful pet. Multiple times I caught myself reaching into my pocket when I’d feel my phone vibrate. I stopped myself at the lock screen before I could engage with the content. My apple watch was also on during the time and I would frequently look at the watch face instead of embracing my surrounding. This might be in part because I often do this specific walking path therefore the stimuli are rather boring to me. Only when I finally reached the lake did I feel at peace with the environment. I stayed there for 10 minutes watching the lake and other people pass by. The only point I was tempted to use my phone was when I saw a fungi species that I wanted to identify with the seek app (since I’m not confident in my ability to classify by eyesight alone).  On the way back when my hour was finished, I decided to listen to an audiobook instead of challenging myself to continue the rest of the walk media-free. 

  This activity was certainly a learning experience. I knew going into it that I would have some difficulty doing the second half of this challenge. If I could do it again I probably would have brought a friend with me instead of going about it alone. In an ideal world, my love of nature and all its creatures would overpower my neurodivergent thought patterns. However, constant media exposure is a coping mechanism of mine that has been ingrained in me. Being left alone with my thoughts for too long can cause high distress so suffice it to say it was challenging to complete the walk without engaging in social media or any other media source. 

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.

Bailey Price

Its a Sunday. 10:15am. I am lying on the couch. I start the timer app on my phone and set it to 1 hour.

I open up instagram and immediately look at Katya from middle school’s stories.  She’s hand knitting a sweater, she’s cooking vegan tacos, she’s reminiscing over her time working on a farm sheering sheep, she’s posted pictures of her dresses that she designed for the past two Met Galas. I click the next story. I see that my aunt in Montana is raising quail, her cow is pregnant and expecting to give birth in August, she’s collecting chicken eggs with her kids, they are cute. She has more instagram followers than me. I exit out of stories, I’ve seen enough. I start scrolling through people’s posts. My teammates went hiking at great falls and took a bunch of selfies together, they look happy, I didn’t get invited. I watch a video as someone solders their stained glass piece. It’s pretty. I need to work on mine. I skip over the ad on yoga routines. Someone made a bird out of soft glass, it looks hard, I wonder if I could replicate it in the studio.

I switch to Facebook. Someone is getting rid off a hot pink hoverboard, its best for ages 10 and under. I skip an ad about avocado prices at lidl. My aunt in Maryland’s crepe myrtle is covered in ice. Someone posts a picture of unknown seedpods in the Virginia Native Plant Society Group, the comments identify it as the kernel inside of a sycamore seed. cool. My neighbor’s daughter is trying to sell girl scout cookies but is having a hard time due to the pandemic. Uncle John posted a picture of a gator down in Florida. I click on his profile. A post saying his cat died is sandwiched between two different rants about how Biden is ruining the country. I want to comment how outdoor cats have incredibly shortened lifespans and are more likely to die of injury and disease, that they contribute to decimating endangered bird species, especially in FL where he lives. But I know he wouldn’t listen to me, just like if I were to comment about how his rants on Biden aren’t factual and based on conspiracy theories, my advice would be received the same way. I lose sympathy over his cat’s death, he should have kept it inside.

I hear ducks quacking. I blink. My alarm has gone off. It has been an hour.

It’s snowing outside. Big white fluffy flakes. I pull on a sweater, my coat, and my shoes and set out through the front door. The snow there hasn’t been disturbed. I walk along the sidewalk looking at the animals tracks in the snow. That looks like a dog. That is some kind of bird, maybe a robin? There are some squirrel tracks. I amble down to the creek, the water level is higher than usual. The water rushes over the stones, bubbling, carrying thin pieces of ice from where its formed along the bank. There are a few kids at the playground. I stop and talk with my neighbors. Stephanie has found out she’s pregnant and is learning the sex on Friday. She wants to know if I can babysit her 2 year old while she goes for her appointment. Of course I can. I say my goodbyes and keep walking. I walk into the park and see sled tracks going down the hill. It hits me that this is probably the best sledding location in all of Fairfax. I keep walking. The forest looks like another world. I wish I brought my phone. I also am glad that I didn’t. This scenery is transient and it feels fair to hold it in my memories instead of static on my phone. There are deer tracks leading to the wineberry bramble. I love the winter and the snow and all the secrets we get to see in how the animals move. Even as I am content with the season, I yearn for the green of spring, of the morels that will grow overnight in April, of the berries I will be able to pick in the summer, mulberries in May, wineberries in June, and blackberries in July. I turn around and make my way home.

What I have learned from this experience is not new to me. I enjoy social media. I love seeing what people I know are doing, I follow accounts that specialize in things that interest me. But, I get so jealous, and with the envy comes anxiety. I feel like I follow so many people that are so creative non-stop, they are constantly making something out of fiber or glass and metal or thread. I feel like I am lacking in this inner motivation to be in a constant artistic wave. It can be exhausting comparing myself to others. 

Being outside is so calming for my nerves and my worries. I don’t have to compare myself to the perfect people on my screen. I feel in my element, I feel in control and that I know what’s going on around me. I love seeing what my neighbors are doing, how their kids are and how school is going. I love petting all of the dogs that get to jump around in our first snow in years. Being outside is a balm to the heart, reminding me that the world is so much bigger than the inside of my head.

Alexandria Cox

To fill my hour of media consumption I opened Netflix on my laptop to watch the first season of a show called Ultimate Beastmaster. It involves contestants from six different countries (including the US) competing in various obstacle courses. Before the competition started, I immediately began rooting for the Mexican team. Not long into the show I found myself texting, getting on FaceTime, and scrolling through some of my social media. Whenever I felt like I missed something important I would rewind it, but I did not stop doing things on my phone. There was one moment where I ended up pausing the show to watch a video on Facebook. This was the only moment in that hour that I gave something my undivided attention. This hour showed me that I try to give focus to too many things at once.

Given that I am at my dad’s house and am unfamiliar with the area I decided to go out to the front of the house. There was snow on the ground and on the stairs, so I stood by the door for fifteen minutes looking around at the neighboring houses and watching cars go by on the main road. When I finally moved towards the stairs all I could think about is making sure that I don’t fall or step in something hidden in the snow. I spent the rest of my hour pacing back and forth wondering how much time has passed so I can go back inside and get in bed. Being out there was difficult. Not because I was bored, but because I couldn’t listen to music to pass the time. So, all I could do is to think about all times I took being indoors for granted.

This experience has shed light on the fact that although I am an environmental science major, I do not like the outdoors. I appreciate nature and recognize its importance, but I can only enjoy experiencing being out in nature for a limited time. This could be because I have spent most of my life finding entertainment indoors through movies, shows, and social media.

Camila Veizaga

As I start getting comfortable in my bed in front of my computer screen, I am opening my Pinterest board to check new ideas for a social media project. I manage the social media accounts for my sorority and I want to create a new aesthetic for it. Because this job is all about looking at a screen, I spend a fair amount of my time looking at my devices. This new project makes me excited and nervous at the same time. Therefore, scrolling down the images on my virtual board I realize that I have many options on how carrying out this aesthetic dilemma, which decreases my anxiety. I decide that is time to learn how to create this desired Instagram look and I go to YouTube. I immediately get bombarded with a ton of suggested videos and watch the one with the most views. Nine thousand people liked this video, but I thought it was not as useful for me. After 60 more minutes searching for the right video, I get frustrated because I cannot find a useful video.

After that hour spent trying to figure how to carry out my project, I decide to admire the sunset through my window. I close my eyes and the warmth of the golden hour on my face makes me forget how cold is outside transporting me to last summer. My appreciation for sunsets started five years ago when I moved to the U.S. Watching the sun delicately touching the plants outside of my window reminded me that a year ago, I was going through a tough breakup and the beauty of sunsets kept me sane. I open my eyes and I smile back to the sun because I am grateful for everything I have accomplished in a year. I decide to take a quick picture and go for a walk. I followed a trail near my house. To my surprise, I saw an eagle eating a squirrel and I wished I had my phone to take a picture. I immediately turned back following the opposite side of the trail. The rest of the time I thought about that interaction and how nature works. I thought about the million events in the universe that had to happen in order for us, humans, to be alive. I felt grateful. I also thought about my project, but this time I reminded myself that I was capable of doing great things and that whatever I ended up doing it was going to be great.

This experience helped me remember that taking a break from the screens is important not only for my mental health, but also good for my creativity. I once read that our inner self naturally knows how to be successful, but because of distractions of our environment we are unable to reconnect to that natural self. Nature carries out complex projects all the time, from photosynthesis in a plant to that eagle eating a squirrel. As humans, we are also part of a successful project from nature and the majority of the time the answers to our problems lay within us.

 

Dylan Wake

It’s 4pm. Class has just ended. Of course, it’s time to just do nothing for an hour. Possibly more.  I start with just playing on my Nintendo Switch for a while, and texting intermittently. The game is fun, but every now and then I pause and browse Reddit just to see discussions about shows I watch or pictures of sneakers. This goes on for a while, flying on to 4:30. Bits of information enter my head, but almost all of them part ways with me immediately. New Balance is releasing a new shoe model this week. GameStop’s stock price has dropped almost by 150% in a day. By this point, I’m getting too distracted to play longer, so the Switch goes into rest mode. Now it’s time to just browse Blackboard, looking at my assignments and marking down what I need to do. Looking through other discussion board posts, my hour of technology seems different in detail but essentially the same as everyone else’s. By now it’s 4:45. I top off the hour by eating a late lunch and watching some of The Clone Wars on my PC, and returning back to Reddit on my phone. And so, I return to multitasking, barely absorbing any of the details of either source as the clock strikes 5.

It’s 7pm. I go on a short walk to enjoy the neighborhood after dark. Of course, there are less people around so I get to walk at my own pace. There had been a cloud cover for a few days, and snow was still bound to come down, so I could not see any of the stars. I hear almost nothing, besides the ambience of the highway a few miles down the road. There are no birds out anymore, but occasionally one will fly above my head. The only sound is the crunching of the snow under my boots. And it’s an enjoyable one. Sometimes a gust of wind will blow by, or a tree will drop snow onto my head. It’s nice not to have to really think about anything except where my feet are taking me. I reach the forest in the back of my neighborhood and it’s as quiet as ever. The trees sway, and I take it in. The tranquility sets me at ease. I head back home feeling refreshed, knowing I’ll feel this way until I go to sleep tonight.

There isn’t much I learn from being indoors all the time. In truth, I only learn small factoids that further my bare understanding of the world, and tidbits that I will forget in an hour. It is addicting and alluring to me, however, because of how consumable it is. Compared to my nature walk, I was fed more raw information in my hour of technology. I can’t really put into words what I “learned” walking through my neighborhood. It’s the same sidewalk I’ve walked every night since I moved there, and it’s the same amount of snow that shows up every few years. Not to say that this was not an enjoyable experience; it just opposes everything that staying indoors stands for. For one, I don’t think I’d be able to walk outdoors for hours and hours on a daily basis the same way I can play games till midnight. But, this is just how the outdoors are: a greater scale of information that we no longer need to prioritize in our daily lives. I enjoyed the opportunity to take a broad look at my outside world, but I’m alright staying indoors most of the time. Like Bill McKibben says, money supplants skill. Just as the wealthy couple could not sail, the crew members do not know how to pursue any other interest. We all have settled into being distant from nature, and I’m not lying to myself about that. It is not fundamental to human life anymore. But, if I could not go on a hike ever again, I’d be truly saddened. When I have the chance, I’ll be going on a hike again. Just don’t tell McKibben that I end the day watching TV, we both know I’m happily stupid.  

Anonymous

An hour outside isn’t too unordinary for me; taking the bus and walking everywhere has normalized me to being outside. Being outside and free of anthropogenic audio-visual information is a bit more uncommon, as I usually listen to music to make time pass faster. Being outside and far from the sounds of streets and people is very rare – the last time I’ve truly been far from modern civilization was back during high school Girl Scouts.

The recent snow is a sight for sore eyes – I love how bright its reflection turns the night. The snow cloud coverage makes everything feel closed in as if I was the only one awake. The cold air feels refreshing on my skin, but the winds have a bite to them. 

The isolated feeling I get from the outside helps facilitate my thoughts. The scene before me serves not to distract, but to enhance my thought process. Time feels slower – I don’t feel rushed or pressed to go from one place to another.

As I head back from Daniels Run Park, the atmosphere seems to abruptly flip back to normal. Fast walking people, loud running cars, and no more untouched snow. I don’t mind – this is the ‘outdoors’ I’m more used to – but I do miss the quiet and serene from before.

Being immersed in different media is something that’s the same as being awake for me. My classes are online, my friends are online, and my entertainment is online. An hour of being on my computer feels like such a short period. If time stops when I’m outside, then it flies when I’m on my computer. There’s so much to do, and all of it is actively engaging. I’ll open up Discord and join a voice call while working on assignments for class. I’ll hop between playing a few matches of League of Legends to hosting a private Stardew Valley server for friends. I’ll automate spreadsheets while grinding out stages in Fate/Grand Order. I’ll play a few songs in Stepmania or Muse Dash to maintain my skill level, then open up Hades to try and beat my previous best. If my friend group is feeling a bit too tired for faster gameplay, I’ll load up Jackbox 7 so we can play Champ’d Up. I’ll shop on Etsy for fan-merch, and browse eBay for sales on figures. I’ll go through Sally’s Baking Addiction’s entire catalog to find recipes to try out. I’ll use Photoshop to illustrate and create inside jokes for friends and browse r/wsb with a friend for investment memes. I’ll work on my daily Japanese flashcards while writing blog entries for native speakers to correct. I’ll shop for cosplay prop parts while designing the blueprints in Illustrator.

And all of this cycles and loops. I always have something to do. And I never feel busy or overwhelmed, but time does seem to go so much faster when I’m enjoying myself. The reason I love video games is the personal achievement aspect of it – I’m always trying to be better than I was yesterday. That mindset spreads into other aspects of my life; I’m always trying harder and harder at everything I do. Media consumption doesn’t need to be brainlessly watching television as McKibben described in his book – it can be productive and engaging. There’s some bad to this – most students my age might be much more easily distracted if not working on an engaging task. It’s hard to downgrade the level that we buzz at. But I prefer a generation that wants to do more than one that wants to do less.

Enjoyment of the outdoors is most fulfilling for the generation that spends its time in the opposite environment. There is an appropriate balance between faster and slower-paced environments, and neglecting either one won’t lead to a life as fulfilling as it could be. For individuals like myself who live and breathe online, taking time to appreciate the outdoors is one of the best things we can do for ourselves.

Katherina Wilkins

Every morning I wake up sometime between the hours of 7 and 8, following the same mundane routine day after day. I look at the time; my eyes want nothing more but to shut again but I force them open to serve as a signal. I tell myself it’s time to start waking up, but I do not drag myself out of bed to go on an early morning run or take a refreshing shower to start my day. The first thing I reach for, without fail, is the phone plugged in beside my bed. Saturday morning is no exception, as I wake up by mindlessly scrolling through some form of social media. On snapchat, I tap through the posts made by friends, not truly paying attention to the details of their lives. On tiktok, I see the newest trend roaming the app, a video that puts a smile on my face, and a list of songs that “make you feel on top of the world.” I then move on to YouTube where I check the recommendations section: “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #7,” “What I’m doing in 2021 Instead of Traveling,” “High schoolers decide who gets $1000.” But none of these things fill me with a sense of purpose. I never think to myself, “I am so happy I spent that hour scrolling through my phone. I really gained something from it.” Instead, I experience a deeply engrained feeling of discontent as I ask myself, “Why did I not get up sooner? Why did I not use that time to be productive? I need to change. I’m going to change. It’s just a matter of time.” But each morning I do the exact same thing, experience the exact same feeling, and give myself the spiel once again. I cannot kick the habit. At this point, my phone is like an addiction.

But this morning, the very last day of January, I look outside my window with the anticipation that a changed world will lay before me. The freshly fallen snow lays like a blanket over the yard, untouched, without a single blemish, completely undisturbed by mankind. I listen through the cracked window; I hear birds chirping, singing their morning song. Normally, I find the winter months to be nothing but a nuisance. The plants look like they’ve died and the cold weather chills me to the bone. But this year, I have begun to appreciate the beauty that winter has to offer, as the sun trickles through the bare branches casting shadows upon my walls. Nonetheless, I have always loved the snow. A few hours after waking up, I suit up with the rest of my family to take a walk through my neighborhoood in the icy world before us. I laugh as my dog frolics through the snow that is halfway up his legs. I pay attention to see if anyone has walked the same path as us, but we are the first to leave a trail of footprints behind. I look up at the pale white sky to see giant snowflakes falling towards me at a leisurely pace, slowly melting as they land on my gloves. I come to the realization that nature takes its time. It is not concerned with the fast, short-term entertainment that I have grown accustomed to. It is these memories, the walks I take with my parents as we admire the snow, telling stories and sharing in laughter, that I will cherish the most.

I began this assignment with the mindset that I already knew what the outcome would be. Afterall, I know that my love of nature will always surpass that of social media. What I did not expect, is how the process of writing about these vastly different experiences would change my outlook on the morning habits I have adopted. In a way, it required me to be honest with myself and has granted me an overwhelming motivation to make a change that I believe will have a large impact on the way I feel. I am under no illusion that I will kick my bad habits in one fell swoop, but I have already begun to make a change. I have limited the number of social media sites I visit and I am cutting down the time spent on my phone in small increments, with the end goal of spending no part of my morning on my phone all together. I would rather spend this time taking a short walk outside to prepare myself for the day or water my plants with music in the background that puts me at ease. I believe that starting my day surrounded by natural beauty will be a much more fulfilling experience, and I am interested to see the shifts in my mood when the changes are eventually made.

Jackie Luu

I am reading through an assigned pdf article for a class using my phone while simultaneously listening to people play videogames on Twitch. This multitasking is probably not the most efficient or productive way to complete my homework assignments. However, I am not in any hurry at the moment (it is the once every month miracle of me not procrastinating), so I allow myself to be distracted by watching the videogame in between every several sentences I read. The article is interesting, though also very dense and complicated, and I find myself reading bits aloud to keep myself a tad bit more focused. Then I turn my attention back to the videogame where the streamers are playing a chill, virtual farming simulation with some mining and spooky skeletons and slimes here and there.

            In a small park near my hometown, I venture along a snowy, ice-laden trail while accompanied by my shivering little chihuahua. It is a cold day, and the trail is soupy with mud. Piles of remaining snow and raindrops fall from the trees hovering around the trail, one particularly large drop landing at the apex of my tiny companion’s head who shakes his fur in dismay. I can feel the frigidness of the air as I inhale and hear the crunch of the ice and the slosh of the mud under my tennis shoes. The surroundings are very empty and still, though we pass by a couple of other people, each with their own fluffy little companions. Tiny flakes of snow continue to fall at first but then fade away by the end of my journey outdoors.

            One thing I noticed is that I seemed to focus on different senses through the two different experiences. For the media consumption experience, I mainly employed my senses of sight and hearing. I used my eyesight to read off my phone and watch the video, and my hearing to listen to my own voice read the words aloud and to the sounds coming from the video. Although, I used touch to scroll through the pages on my phone, I did not pay attention to the sensation of the phone screen on my fingertips. In contrast, when I was outside, I also noticed the visuals and the sounds, but a lot of the sensations I experienced focused on touch. For example, I noted the feeling of the cold air on my skin and the frigidness when I inhaled. This makes me wonder if by engaging in the digital world, I am losing touch with certain senses that I seem to experience more when I am connected with nature.

Natsuki Watanabe

It is 11pm on a Monday in Fairfax and I breathe a sigh of relief and exhaustion from completing all my homework. It is the second week of school and I am reminded of the long nights from last semester as I adjust back into school mode. Now that I am done with my tasks for today, I open YouTube and click on a new video from my current favorite YouTuber. I pause it to prep my late dinner and resume once I start eating. There are a few moments where I jump ahead of myself and think of other things, like whether I’m forgetting any assignments or something on my to-do list. However, I remind myself that I should relax and not overthink at least when I’m eating. After the 20 minute video ends, I click on another video from a different YouTuber. The YouTuber talks about her wedding planning experience and brings up a hilarious story that gives me a huge laugh. Thanks to that scene, I think my tension loosened and I felt more relaxed. Although I could be browsing through YouTube for hours, I closed my computer so I get as much sleep as possible.

A few weeks before, when I was back in Hawaii for winter break, I would go for daily walks around my neighborhood with my mom in the evening or night. One day, we left around 7pm and the sky was just dark enough to create a silhouette of palm trees. The breeze from the wind was so refreshing and the crying of the crickets was present as usual. In the beginning, it smelt earthy, like soil, but as we approached near the beach, the fishy smell of the ocean became stronger. Then came the part of the neighborhood that always smells like some type of flower. During the walk, I was realizing how many discoveries I was making about my neighborhood that I wouldn’t have noticed from passing by in a car. One of my favorite types of discoveries was noticing the various plants by different houses. For example, I’ve come to learn that one house has an avocado tree and that there is an enormous tree in between two houses that is home to many birds (which I discovered from hearing the overwhelming chirping when we passed by one evening). This may sound cliché, but I do think that I was more actively using and aware of my five senses than usual when I would go for these walks in my neighborhood.  

In The Age of Missing Information, Bill McKibben says, “we usually learn a new way of doing things at the expense of the old way.” He describes how the current generation is gaining new types of information from mediated environments such as TVs, computers, and phones, at the expense of losing “fundamental” information. Through my time spent outside in nature without the influence of technology, my physical body and mind were not only refreshed, but my five senses were also actively at play. And I think that these five senses are an important part of this fundamental information that McKibben talks about. I do not think either type of information should be inputted more than the other, but I think that McKibbens’s reading and these 2 hours of information imply that a balance between our time in mediated environments and natural environments is needed.