Two Hours

By Liam Palmer

Basing this experiment on Bill McKibben’s “The Age of Missing Information”, I set out to compare an hour using media versus an hour in a more natural environment with as little technological interruptions as possible. For basically every day, I spend at least an hour using some form of technology, as is the same with most people. For this hour in particular, I decided that I would play a video game. On January 28th, I decided to load up my current favorite game to play to pass the time. This video game is from 2011 and is titled “Skyrim”, which after I loaded up the game I set a timer for an hour. Admittedly, this hour passed by in the blink of an eye. What felt like 5 minutes was truly an hour. This wasn’t exactly surprising, as this is what typically happens with me and distracting myself with a video game. I have deemed this use of technological use as ‘nurture’ simply due to the fact that it’s a fun little play on the biological debate of what is inherently present and what is learned as you grow. 

I decided to do both nature and what I have deemed ‘nurture’ on the same day, and after my adventure in Skyrim, I turn off the game and head to my favorite nature walk. This is Neabsco Wetlands Preserve Boardwalk in Woodbridge, Virginia. When I arrive, I turn my phone on silent and set a timer on my tracking watch. I begin my walk. Prior to the start of the boardwalk, there is a dirt pathway spanning about a quarter mile. It’s muddy due to the leftover blizzard from the first week of January, and it’s windy and cold. I notice the fell trees, broken from the weight of the snow. As I approach the boardwalk, the ground gets more wet. Thankfully, there were wooden planks to prevent slipping in the mud puddles. As I walk across the planks to approach the true boardwalk, I notice the thin sheet of ice that had formed on the top of the stagnant water. A few brief moments longer, and I’ve reached the boardwalk. The wetland is a vast span of flowing water and tiny small ponds with spots of land dotting the area. I find a crane, which is in the middle of hunting, and I spend the rest of my hour just observing the crane catch fish and eat its fill. Again, my timer had gone off on my wrist as if it had only been several minutes. I silently bid the crane farewell and returned to the start of the path to leave and warm myself up.

This experiment did not give me something new that I had learned, but rather reminded me to step away from the bustle of anthropogenic influences. I often go on walks uninterrupted to destress from how rapid everything seems to be with technology. For example, the crane I spend most of my time watching moved so slowly to ensure a catch. The patience that the crane showed reminded me that while I am often able to get something I want or need in the blink of an eye, that is not a universal experience. In a way, it’s humbling, and that is not only applicable to other species of animals but rather other people who do not have the privileges of technology and instant gratification that I do.

By Abigail Kokkinakis

Consuming one hour of media is a lot easier than it seems, especially with how much technology has advanced. Twenty years ago, most media consumption was done by watching TV or hoping onto Myspace to see what the most popular creators were doing. Now there are countless social media website’s and apps. My chosen media sources were TikTok and Twitter. I first went on Twitter where I was bombarded with news stories about Russia and Ukraine, peoples thoughts on the most recent episode of Euphoria, and the people complaining that McDonald’s new “Menu Hacks” do not come already assembled. Now that my brain is spinning from reading these “trending” topics, I hop over to TikTok. Contrastingly, TikTok has a page of content for me, specially made for me, otherwise known as the “FYP” or For You Page. I come across comedy videos, more Euphoria opinions, cleaning and organizational videos, and cooking videos. TikTok’s content was a lot more relaxed and it felt more people were getting along in comparison to Twitter, where it seems everyone hates everyone. 

After that hour that felt like 10 minutes, I headed over to Burke Lake Park where I took a walk around the lake. As I was walking around the lake in silence, I kept reaching for my phone to check the time but remembered I set an hour timer so there was no need to keep glancing at my phone. My mind went to a million different places as I was walking from thinking about school, to thinking about work, to thinking about what I am going to eat for dinner when I returned. I tried to quickly change my mind and tried very hard to focus on the present and what I was observing now. I noticed how everyone walking past me had headphones in, talking to their friend they went with, or were focusing on their dog they were walking. I noticed how much wildlife was out even on the chilly, snowy day I went for my walk. 

One thing for sure I can say is my ability to focus on social media was a lot better than my ability to focus on being present outside. When I was younger, I was able to use my creativity and spend hours and hours outside. Now, spending an hour outside without looking at my phone was honestly, painful. However, if you ask me what TikTok videos I watched in that hour I would not be able to list one, but I do remember very clearly what I saw on my hike, and what thoughts were going through my head. The information I saw on twitter was useful since it kept me updated on certain news topics, but TikTok was just mindless entertainment. The hour outside made me slow down from my life and reminded me to take a moment outside and my life problems are not as stressful as I have been making them out to be. 

By Anonymous

Mediated environment

            I began by sitting in the computer lab in the Johnson center. I sit down and boot up the computer. I can hear a roaring chatter coming from all the way from the crowd of people on the first floor. I enter my passcode to logon the computer. As usual, I immediately turn the sound down because it is always on maximum volume. I firstly open google chrome, like always, see the George Mason Homepage. I go to the blackboard website out of habit to check my grades and see if any homework is due. I go class by class, English, Environmental science, Art History. Firstly, I click on the sustainable world class, I see there is a reading and assignment due.  The contents of the assignment consist of reading a textbook chapter and writing a summarization blogpost. Next, I spend about 45 minutes doing the said assignment. The main points I gathered from this work was that population is best controlled by education. Using forced methods such as sterilization counteractively lead to an increase in population.  

Natural Setting

            I open my backdoor to go out on the porch to sit and relax. Firstly, I immediately go to my own thoughts that I am living in a medium sized townhouse neighborhood and am grateful there is this plot of land(backyard), which is peaceful from nature. There is a tall privacy fence surrounding me. Then my mind focuses on reality. The time is 2pm so it is usually peaceful and it was. Acoustically, I hear the slight breeze in the air and I am reminded how cold it is. I look around and see clumps of snow in the corners of the fence where it had recently snowed. Some minutes pass by and I hear a revving car on the nearby highway. I look around to see if I can see any animals, there is a tall tree where often birds are, but I don’t see anything. For the rest of the time, I daydream but occasionally looks around to see anything, I sometimes see a bird, but the sound of slight wind does not change.

Summary

            This experience has made me appreciate how far technology is advanced. I found myself very bored sitting in nature and trying to see/hear animals. Outside, I was left to daydream with no electronics. However, I was much more productive at the computer doing my assignments. But, I do know the importance of balancing technology and nature.

By Alexander Ameika

The amount of information I received from an hour of media consumption was immense. While there was a large amount of information present, I received it in so many small pieces and from so many sources that I didn’t commit much of it to memory. The majority of it was entertainment from media sources like Tik Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Some was directly from people I know, or group chats where I talk to friends, and some was produced for entertainment from popular figures and accounts. Between pieces of information I intended to receive I saw advertisements. This would either be interrupting what I’m trying to see, like when an ad plays in the middle of a Youtube video, or on the side of what I would like to view, like the public stories on snapchat below my friends stories. 

The amount of information I received from an hour of being outdoors was great as well. I spent an hour in my kayak on burke lake. However, the information was mostly natural and not directly influenced by anthropogenic sources. This came in the form of sounds I heard. This included sounds from animals, water moving, leaves rustling, and things like sticks falling from the canopy to the forest floor. Other information I received was visual. I would see how birds acted when flying together, or how large birds of prey moved while looking for fish to catch. I also received information from the surrounding environment that was mostly visual. Things like water clarity from whether or not I could see the lake bottom in places I usually do, temperature from ice still on the lake, and depth of the lake from comparing the water level to the more recent high water marks on the banks.

I didn’t learn many new things from this experience because I frequently spend time exposed to media and the outdoors. When I spend time outdoors I try to limit my phone use to texts for later plans or with people I’m outside with that aren’t close enough to hear. Some activities I do outside, like surfing, demand attention and create a situation where I cannot consume media. This is the first time I’ve had to compare the two though, and I’ve learned something from reflecting on these hours. The information I receive from media is less focused and concentrated than the information I receive form natural things. There are so many small pieces of information that try to draw ones attention and can be distracting while using a device. It doesn’t feel as good to consume because it can cause some type of stress in me. There is too much stimulation from a device that allows me to consume media. When outdoors it’s easier to take everything in at once or focus on specific things while still receiving some information from everything else that makes up the environment around me. Even when I’m focused on one thing on my phone I can’t ignore the notifications that appear as banners on the top of my screen. This feels very different from observing an animal or element of the environment and also hearing noises behind me and feeling the atmosphere. The information received from nature feels easier and less stressful to process, and even receive. It doesn’t require much effort and it feels like it simply happens.

By Samantha Dawkins

I love to spend my time a variety of ways, though especially inside during the winter. The wind is cold and harsh against my bright red cheeks, and I prefer to watch the violent graciousness of winter from the sanctity of my loft. A popular gaming stream is playing in the background when I ask my partner if he’d like to play Stardew Valley with me for an hour. It’s my favorite game, with a plethora of things to solve and discover while consciously participating in the monotony of maintaining a virtual farm. Of course my partner says yes, and I start up our game. We live on a plot of land we’ve deemed ‘Lover’s Farm’ where we grow seasonal produce, maintain our livestock for milk and eggs which eventually turn into cheese and mayo, and produce a wide variety of jams and wines. It’s an NPC’s (non-playable character) birthday, so I make them their favorite meal and ride my horse across town to gift it them in order to increase our friendship level. During this journey I visit an abandoned vineyard on the edge of the forest which houses a small mystical creature called a Junimo—his name is Apples. I bring him a starfruit, his favorite, but not because I think I’ll gain something this time, solely because I find him the cutest creature in the game, and I cherish him. Maybe more than my virtual children. My one-hour alarm dings and I realize how quickly an hour can fly by. While there is nothing as unique fully immersing yourself into a particular media, I realize how bad my back hurts…and my neck. I’ve been in the same position for an hour, slumped over my laptop.

I stand up and stretch my body to feel a little relief. I slip on some socks and shoes and then my hefty winter coat. Its probably not that cold outside but it definitely feels like it. I’m walking around my neighborhood, admiring the beautiful landscape when I see a small brown rabbit staring back at me. I’ve always been fascinated with wildlife—I used to collect empty birds nests and bee/wasp nests. I don’t particularly want to interact with them (for their sake, not my own), I just love to admire, so I took a seat on a nearby curb and watched the world play out. A group of squirrels came running into the picture, hopping around the snow patched grass. Squirrels have sharp eyes, and one spotted me watching, standing up on its hind legs to get a better look. I must’ve looked pretty boring and harmless as it quickly went back to play. The squirrels spooked the rabbit who eventually ran into a nearby bush and was quickly replaced by a pileated woodpecker, whose bright red head stood out among the dull colors of winter. I watched for a little longer, until the cold started to sting my nose, and then I began my walk home. My one-hour alarm went off just as I turned onto my street, so I hurried back to my warm retreat.

Though I don’t feel I’ve learned much through this experience, it did remind me why I love nature so much, and why it is such an important thing in my life. I’ve made lifestyle decisions and academic/career choices solely based on my love for the environment, and I think sometimes its easy to lose sight of what past me loved so much she bet her future on it. I feel that both aspects of my life, natural and mediated, are important as they work and assist my brain in different ways.

By EA

In today’s world everyone is constantly on their phones or watching tv and spreading lies and misinformation and people just never seem to just stop what they are doing and get up and go for a little adventure. It doesn’t even have to be for long. You could go to a national park or a local park, or just take your dog for a walk without being plugged to our electronic devices. You can find joy and happiness with nature and wildlife just outside your doorstep.

There I am watching the Nightly News on NBC and ABC every night getting all the headlines from the day’s events.  I watched a lot of Covid and mask policies coverage on the news mostly of course, but there was also new coverage about the upcoming Winter Olympics and the Superbowl playoff games. I watched the weather reports about the blizzards in the East coast and was kind of disappointed that we didn’t get a blizzard because I love snow and the cold, and it never really snows in Virginia anymore. It was also interesting seeing the south being hit with frigid temperatures and iguanas falling from trees because they become frozen and just fall. When the temperature warms up and they thaw out and are still alive. I find that very fascinating. After I watched the news, I switch to Disney+ to watch Encanto for the fourth time. I do all this while on my other electronic devices. I am sure it is not the healthiest way to life when being consumed by technology, social media, and the news. I then check my blackboard and email again to make sure I don’t miss any assignments or important announcements. As a socially anxious introverted person who spends my time isolated in my apartment avoiding social interaction because the pandemic has caused a decline in progress with my social anxiety, so it is like starting from scratch and it sucks. 

Since it was very cold over the weekend I stayed on campus and didn’t want to slip on icy roads driving somewhere. I just decided to explored campus for an hour being unplugged in the winter environment and checked out GMU’s different gardens and greenhouses on campus and visited the pond across from the Performing Arts Center looking for geese or squirrels or any wildlife if they weren’t hibernating. It was nice getting outside and taking in the sights since I never had time to do it my first semester in the fall as a transfer student. Last semester, I volunteered 20 hours in the hydroponic greenhouse, innovative food forest and the roof top greenhouse for volunteer hours for my class last semester. I never thought of myself as a plant person until I started volunteering for the Sustainability office. It really helped with my stress and anxiety it was very calming, fun, relaxing, and I just kept going back every moment of it. I hope to start volunteering again this spring semester soon because I had so much fun volunteering at the different greenhouses and gardens. I love nature and animals and I want to start doing more exploring because I want to do wildlife conservation of some kind someday. My walk sure was cold but so worth it in the end.

By Eric DeBerry

Virtually the entire world is online these days, all of humanity’s knowledge is accessible via the internet and social media, which is also hosted from the internet which reigns as king for interacting with friends, family, and strangers. I decided to hop on my computer and scour the internet as my source of media consumption. I start my hour by immediately opening Spotify and playing some music as background noise. This was done I realized a second later as pure muscle memory, not really a conscious thought given to it. It’s almost a ritual to instantly distract myself with music the second I have free time. I wonder how dull it must have felt back before having instant access to a backtrack to everyday life. Then again would it have really seemed dull if the distraction was not even something thought of as a possibility at their time? The world seems so small now with the ease of communication and ease of access to information and distractions at just the touch of your fingertips. I decide to open YouTube, something that has been at the forefront of my internet world since my childhood and start a video with a clip from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I am immediately hit with the most annoying and common part of modern life: ads. An eyerolling commercial with an emu, I watch fifteen seconds of this before my video. My clip rolls by and I, like the robot I am, click on another clip in the recommendations. Another ad hits me, the same exact ad. I endure the fifteen seconds and start my video. In what feels like a few minutes, I look at the clock and a little over an hour has passed. I look at what I am currently watching, I had gone from clips of a tv show to seeing a man make a sausage using only grounded up lemons. I barely noticed the time go by… I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my day on this stupid website, but then I see a thumbnail of the same man making sausage out of twinkies. What’s another a few minutes I think to myself and click on the video.  

When it came to find a place to distance myself from the noise and distractions of Fairfax I immediately thought of home. I come from rural western Loudoun, where it took me twenty minutes to drive to high school, and traffic jams were created by tractors moving at five miles an hour rather than a million cars all trying to weave past each other. I decided that since I had the afternoon free, I might as well drive the hour or so back towards the country, so off I headed. I ended up at Raven’s Rock in western Virginia, a quick hike up the mountainside and I’m all but alone. The first thing I do is take a deep breath. There is something about the cold crisp mountain air that feels so refreshing. I find a fallen tree and use it as a seat to lounge back and survey my surroundings. It’s a bit too cold for too much of the wildlife to be active but you can hear the occasional bird in the distance and the snap of twigs as what I assume are deer move around in the distance. Its peaceful, quiet, and something I miss from before moving to Fairfax for school. The woods make the world seem to stretch and grow, seemingly less crowded and larger than the constant strip malls, townhomes, and various buildings that surround everyday life in the suburban area that neighbors D.C. and make everything seem within an arm’s reach. I sit for a while and reminisce about the camping trips and dumb high school parties I used to go to in these woods. Its then the timer on my phone goes off, and I am drawn back to the present and summoned back towards civilization. 

My experience with this little experiment reminded me of how easily it is to be distracted by the small meaningless things shoved in our faces constantly and how much time we lose by getting drawn into these things. It also reminded me of how much I miss the quiet, and the peacefulness that can come from nature and the outdoors. Being from the country I often took these things for granted and it is only when I am coming back from the constant noise and stimulation from busy Fairfax do I realize how much I really appreciate the calmness of the countryside. Time seems to slow down when not I am no longer distracted by my phone or computer, but I also know that these things have become all but essential in modern society. The quiet of the country is relaxing but this world we live in operates from behind a computer screen, and while it is nice to unplug occasionally, the future is without a doubt plugged in.

By Anonymous

For my hour in a mediated environment, I watched YouTube and used Instagram for an hour. When using social media that does not have sound associated, I put music on before going back to scrolling. On YouTube, I watched various video. I watched some hair style tutorials and videos of hairdressers doing cool looking haircuts or dye patterns. I watched some videos of someone decorating cakes. I did not gain much from most of the videos, however I did watch a few that I feel taught me a new skill or way of doing something. Besides those, I watched some other random videos and then switched to Instagram. Some of the pictures on social media were of beautiful landscapes or national parks, which I regularly look through and found a bit ironic since I was sitting on my couch with so many beautiful parks nearby. After spending an hour on my phone, I usually feel a little bit melancholy as I feel that I could have used my time in a more productive way. 

For my hour in an outdoor environment, I went to Burke Lake Park and walked on the path around the lake. It was very cold, and most of the lake was frozen. There were deer tracks on the frozen lake, and some were fairly far from the shore. I also saw two types of woodpeckers, a pileated woodpecker and a downy woodpecker. There were lots of people walking, running, or biking despite the bitter cold.  

After completing this assignment, I realized that I usually have music or a podcast playing, which is not a bad thing in itself, but I also feel that I have lost the ability to comfortably sit in silence. I definitely feel an information overload. When watching tutorials, there are often so many ways to do something that I don’t commit to one. I just watch several that are different and then can’t remember any of them. I noticed that I gravitate away from videos that are over five minutes long, and I feel that our fast-paced culture has made our attention spans much shorter. Even though it is sometimes a hassle to get outside, I am always glad and feel better after being outside.

By Anonymous

For this assignment, we were tasked to spend one hour gathering information from both technology and media, then an hour outside in nature. For the first hour I decided to spend my time scrolling through Youtube and watching completely random videos instead of just one news channel, and here is what I learned. In narwhales, the larger the tusk, the larger the testicles, and the tusk is actually a tooth that pierces through their faces. I also learned that there are lava tubes on the moon and scientists think this would be a good place to start a moon colony. Next I learned that in far sighted people, your glasses will make your eyes look bigger, while in nearsighted people your glasses will make your eyes look smaller. I also learned that if you put a strawberry in bleach, you can remove the red from the strawberry. Lastly, I learned that companies actually own certain colors like barbie with pink and post it notes with yellow.

For my next hour, I went out to my back yard and sat next to the fire watching the wildlife in my pasture. I live out in Fauquier county, so we have a good amount of wildlife present compared to Fairfax. First off in my time outside, I learned that Vasoline or any petroleum jelly is a fantastic fire starter. During my time outside, I was greeted by a small population of deer that call my pasture home. We have around 8 doe that bed in the back and at this time, some should be pregnant with twins. In this group there are around 3 yearlings, which were just fawns last year. The next thing I learned is that my horse prefers to drink out of the pond, I believe this is because his water is most likely frozen on the top layer. After watching my horse, I noticed some of my neighbors chickens in the back. I believe this is because the chickens prefer the horse manure pasture because they’re able to find more to eat. Lastly for my hour outside I saw a couple of ducks stopping by my pond for rest as they fly south. These two ducks always come back to our pond around this time and also in the spring when it warms up. The cool part is they always come back and in the spring they bring their ducklings for the peace, quiet, and a good meal from our pond.

During this assignment I learned a lot about the differing information gathered from both media and Nature. I learned that when watching Youtube, I gathered a bunch of useless information regarding a bunch of different fields and not just one topic. I will probably forget a lot of this information a week from now since it has no impact on my life. Next with my time spent in nature, I didn’t learn a bunch but I still gathered information. This information I gathered will most likely be of more use to me since It has directly impacted me and my relative environment. I do not think either of these were bad forms of information gathering, but I think a combination of the two would be the most beneficial. 

By Colin McDonald

For the hour of media, I decided to look at news websites. Starting with the New York Times I look at the headlines, the big topics being discussed include the US and Russia arguing about Ukraine at the UN, Boris Johnson being criticized for having parties during Covid lockdowns, and the Moderna Covid vaccine gaining FDA approval. I click on and read an article about people in Senegal who sort through waste looking for plastic to sell; one woman supports her family with the $25 – $30 dollars she makes a week doing this. Throughout the article ads from Facebook, Capital One, and a clothing brand I’ve never heard of compete for my attention. Next, I go to The Washington Post, I see mostly the same topics in the headlines, as well as Joe Rogan and Spotify, and the Olympics (“The Games begin Feb. 4. What you need to know.”) I click on an article about the Biden administration putting more restrictions on coal plants. Here the ads seem more to do with the article, “Severe climate threats are increasing. These expert tips will help get you and your home ready.”

After that I go to NPR. “1 in 4 Americans say violence against the government is sometimes OK” reads the top story. Lastly, I go to BBC news. The top headline is about Ahmaud Arbery’s family being angry about a plea deal given to the people who murdered him. Under that “Trudeau calls trucker protest ‘insult to truth.’” I scroll down and click on “Lioness mauls zookeeper to death and escapes.” As I read about the lion that killed the zookeeper while being fed, animated text in a Popeyes ad informs me that the “$6 Big Box is back for a limited time!” next to a picture of fried chicken.

For the hour of nature I went to Mason Neck Park. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, and it was quiet except for some birds calling in the leafless trees above. As I walked down the trail I noticed that there were some large branches that look like they had recently fallen, and smaller trees had been bent and snapped. I thought that was probably due to the earlier heavy snow that fell at the beginning of January. At the end of the trail the forest ends, and a viewing platform overlooks the wetlands that the forest surrounds. The wetlands were frozen over, ice surrounding patches of mud with brown reed looking plants. There were birds in and around the wetlands, and I stood on the viewing platform taking in the view for a while.

From this experience I learned how my attention is affected by different things. In nature I was more aware of my surroundings and chose what to direct my attention to. On my phone things are made to try and get my attention, and information is extremely concentrated. Nature is not trying to sell me something, it was not made with humans in mind, yet I felt more satisfaction from experiencing the forest and wetlands than spending time on the internet.