Time, Toxic, Skim: Curation as Noun, Adjective, and Verb.
Time
We're busy. We spin and leap (or, more accurately, tumble) from thing to thing and person to person, seeking input without investment, validation without risk. Time seems the fundamental currency yet we waste it scrolling.
Maybe these declarative sentences are at once cause, symptom, and consequence of snorkeling along the surface.
Time itself is a construct.
I wonder if I can experience time as non-linear. Of course, with sprints of memory and spins of imagination. But I must engage those connective tissues, those ligaments of thought and understanding and sometimes clear the breathing tube, suck air and go deeper so that my metaphors stop mixing and crystallize.
Toxic
I read a PBS interview today with Ada Limon where Judy Woodruff mentions Toxic as the word of the year. We poison one another online with reflexive spew. The virtual world is built on metaphors of junk and disease.
Skim
I want your attention. Student, family member, friend. So I try to shape my input, my communication to fit in smaller pieces of time. This is the model of capitalism. Demand has shifted so the product must undergo some metamorphosis. Titles must be clickable. I embrace summary and surface. Tell you what chapters to skip. Give you bullet points and fragments which do violence to the actual text.
AND, suddenly, after I write a blog recommending skimming the text of Washington to my family, an article about the destructiveness of skimming appears on Facebook, one about the lack of nuance in public discourse, one from nplusone.com about how writers can understand their audience as consumers, and the PBS video above which reminds "At a time when language is often used only as a blunt tool, poetry reminds us that language can also be used for nuance, mystery, and even radical hope."
Some algorithm somewhere has discovered what I want to read about. That's ok, as long as I also think.
LANGUAGE CAN BE USED FOR NUANCE, MYSTERY, AND EVEN RADICAL HOPE.
But we need to make space in our lives to interact with it. That includes picking up holding on to the pieces that roll across our desk tops.
We're busy. We spin and leap (or, more accurately, tumble) from thing to thing and person to person, seeking input without investment, validation without risk. Time seems the fundamental currency yet we waste it scrolling.
Maybe these declarative sentences are at once cause, symptom, and consequence of snorkeling along the surface.
Time itself is a construct.
I wonder if I can experience time as non-linear. Of course, with sprints of memory and spins of imagination. But I must engage those connective tissues, those ligaments of thought and understanding and sometimes clear the breathing tube, suck air and go deeper so that my metaphors stop mixing and crystallize.
Toxic
I read a PBS interview today with Ada Limon where Judy Woodruff mentions Toxic as the word of the year. We poison one another online with reflexive spew. The virtual world is built on metaphors of junk and disease.
Skim
I want your attention. Student, family member, friend. So I try to shape my input, my communication to fit in smaller pieces of time. This is the model of capitalism. Demand has shifted so the product must undergo some metamorphosis. Titles must be clickable. I embrace summary and surface. Tell you what chapters to skip. Give you bullet points and fragments which do violence to the actual text.
AND, suddenly, after I write a blog recommending skimming the text of Washington to my family, an article about the destructiveness of skimming appears on Facebook, one about the lack of nuance in public discourse, one from nplusone.com about how writers can understand their audience as consumers, and the PBS video above which reminds "At a time when language is often used only as a blunt tool, poetry reminds us that language can also be used for nuance, mystery, and even radical hope."
Some algorithm somewhere has discovered what I want to read about. That's ok, as long as I also think.
LANGUAGE CAN BE USED FOR NUANCE, MYSTERY, AND EVEN RADICAL HOPE.
But we need to make space in our lives to interact with it. That includes picking up holding on to the pieces that roll across our desk tops.
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