Idleness in the Chatterspace

I thought the readings this week were a bit of a mixed bag.  On the one hand, we have pieces about how the digital age means there are just too many facts available. I am not sympathetic to those arguments. On the other hand, I believe the pieces about the loss of time for deep reflection cut to the heart of a very troubling issue.

I understand that there are people who feel like this when they look for information online - participant in Hargittai’s study even referenced it:

But I feel like it is a basic survival skill of the 21^st century to be able to filter out digital noise in your day-to-day life.  Ignoring the glut of information on the internet is an aspect of basic executive function now.  It isn’t something to be afraid of, any more than the card catalogue at an old library is something to be scared of.

So rather than focus on this, I want to talk more about Levy discusses in “No Time to Think.” It’s an interesting concept that there are three kinds of thought – a rational understanding of things; a deep engagement with ideas that leads to sudden insight; and the basic, surface-level “chatter.”

The digital age has put a microphone to the chattering parts of our brain.  Strangers on the internet, whose names I do not know and likely never will, have asked me what they should eat for breakfast. And I have answered. I have shared dozens of quotes from the Simpsons, often apropos of nothing. It’s noise of a different type than information overload – it’s chatter overload.

As I got a job and went to grad school, I have found myself on the internet more and more often, reading and commenting and talking with random people. And I find myself missing solitude. Time to sit alone and think, or engage with a difficult book, or learn a new instrument – that time has just vanished into the black hole of chatterspace. I’ve spent my free time in what Levy would call idleness. Wasting time.

I’m very glad to have read Levy’s piece, and I think I will read it again. It’s a good warning to us that we need to think about how we are the things we consume - and the way we consume them - affect us on a personal and deeply intellectual level.  Not all thought is created equal.