Procrastination in the good old days

Lately I’ve been thinking about procrastination and how it seems like most of my procrastination activities are related to being online. This has made me wonder what procrastination was like before the advent of internet. Surely people throughout time must have had the feeling they were wasting time doing nothing- but what kind of nothingness? True, I have been known to spend time glaring out the window, probably scaring small children (I have a scary staring face). But it only happens for minutes at a time, never for hours. Some would say that having a snack also qualifies as procrastination, but I can’t but disagree. Food is food, consuming it is an activity for survival, regardless of whether it’s filling up an empty stomach with lunch or just having a cookie. It therefore qualifies as an activity.

I tried a couple of google searches to see what I could learn about pre-internet procrastination, but the paradox of looking for the answer on the internet was too much for me (besides it was a bit boring). Wikipedia has an article on it (quite scary stuff actually), but most of the websites that popped up were about how to fight the temptation to not do what you’re supposed to.

However, on example of it can actually be found in one of my favourite books (“The Song of the Red Ruby”). The main character is a dedicated student, but throughout the book he is tormented by the fact that he does not study often enough, long enough or well enough. Instead of studying as he should the poor guy wastes his time on violin playing, picking up girls and going to political meetings. In my world these qualify, again, as activities. This leads me to think that what we conceive of as procrastination has changed somewhat fundamentally with the internet.

Because what do I actually achieve by pressing ‘send and receive messages’ in outlook, by looking at a friends pictures from a trip I did not take part in, by watching videos (again) of stand-up shows on youtube, by reading web comics or headlines in a tabloid newspaper? The list could go on. There is something telling me that my own creative and intellectual development would improve if I, instead, spent time learning how to play the violin. I don’t know where this comes from (my mum probably).

It could be that this is not the right way to look at it. Perhaps this feeling of guilt for “wasting” time doing nothing, learning nothing is all wrong and that it is instead time to embrace procrastination as a meaningful activity in itself. There is something Andy Warholish over it, like instead of saying that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, we’d say that in the future everyone will procrastinate for 15 hours. Straight. And after having done so they’ll go out and tell people, and everyone will make big eyes and go “oooh” as a true (non-sarcastic) token of appreciation of the obvious intellectual development that has taken place.

So I should transform my guilt of procrastination into feeling content about my personal development (perhaps the same feeling my mum would have if I got really good at playing the violin). Meanwhile I’ll go have a cookie. 

when the Docs mocks

'You don't get it. I built this place. Down here I make the rules. Down here I make the threats. Down here... I'm God..' 

--Trainman, The Matrix Revolutions.

(before you read on, I would like to tell you that I have been warned not to be 'geeky') 

 

The Internet is a world, its a world built on code, content and context. Sure, I didn’t make this world. But I have grown up with it, watching the information highway go from two to six lanes, while the back alleys transformed from forgotten forums to social networks. I would like to think that my familiarity with the Internet gives me some credence; not the ability to build a new world, but at least the satisfaction of bragging and threatening noobs. I would like to believe that unlike most users, I can find another way in the web, solve problems and get work done. 

 

Yet like everybody connected to this information pipe-dream, I am subject to the threats and actions carried out by the people who actually built this world or have been geeky enough to take it over. Cutting a long story short, I am scared of Google. Not because I don’t like it, or that its not user friendly enough, but because a single glitch in Google's 'gears' can ruin my day, make my hard work disappear or worse still, simply malfunction. While most of America and the UK watched in horror as their gmail boxes refused to yield, it was the evil simplicity of Google Docs that stole roughly 6 hours from me. 

 

A simple form connected to a simpler spreadsheet refused to be restructured. Every single change I made, would disappear after I refreshed my browser. After hours of trying I realised that I had been punched in the stomach, by the 'don’t be evil' trainman. And it hurt like hell.

Maybe its true that it’s only when technology doesn’t work that we notice its existence. All I have to say is, I know you’re out there Google, and I am watching you.

 ---Geek signing out

PS: this author has another reason to fear Google, last year it stopped people from accessing his anti-google views by labelling his blog as 'spam'. I don’t know about Lessig, but I am praying that spiders and robot code won’t find this too offensive!   

 

Cartoon, Comic or Graphic Novel - Difference anyone?

So next we're planning to watch Watchmen. The trailor is very promising and so are the reviews ("close to the oringal, violent, pornogaphic" ... sounds interesting). As with all of the previous movies which turned cartoons/comics/graphic novels into film, I haven't read the original. Should I? This time I thought I might.

As a friend passed over some electronic of the Watchmen material, we got into a brief discussion whether it was a graphic novel, a cartoon or a comic. "All the same", I thought. But no. "All different", he insisted. So how are they different? The most reliable source for an answer is wikipedia (actually, I wouldn't know where else to look. Just like I wouldn't know where to buy furniture other than at IKEA).

Cartoon. A cartoon can refer to "several very different forms of visual art and illustration". Mmmmh. Very different forms. This doesn't help, wikipedia! Reading on, it gets somewhat more specific and we can infer that it's something about singled page drawings as opposed to a series of pictures, mostly without speech bubbles, using captions instead.

Comic. Here wikipedia gets fancy with the definition: "graphic medium in which images are utilized in order to convey a sequential narrative". Sequential is key here. Not single paged. There is a story line. It seems that comics are always printed. So "Finding Nemo" is not a comic. I could have told you that.

Graphic Novel. "A graphic novel is a type of comic book, usually with a lengthy and complex storyline similar to those of novels." So a subcategory of comic. The only, somewhat blurry, difference seems to be in the complexity of the storyline. Also, in terms of their physical appearance, graphic novels are bound like books. In other words, it's like the comic and the novel having a baby. The baby is a novel with pictures. This doesn't imply that they are intelectually any less challenging than ordinary books with printed texts.

So what about Watchmen? Where to put it? The answer is clearly c) Graphic Novel. I can't wait to read the stuff and then go to find out if the movie is as complex, violent, pornographic as the grahic novel.


P.S. WIRED provides highly interesting background material on the Watchmen. It's an amazing example of how culture feeds on itself.

Good example of what this is about