Have you ever marveled at how easy it is to find info these days?
Today I needed to put a hard drive into an external case. It turned out to be a very simple exercise, but since neither case nor HD came with instructions, I Googled it and found much assurance in someone else’s instructions.
Yesterday I suddenly wondered about the nature of tomatos. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? Since I was also in front of my computer, I looked it up, and found it to be “botanically a fruit but used as a culinary vegetable.”
I have a hole in my jeans that is getting bigger and bigger. So I found 3 ways to mend it.
During my month in Shanghai where it was too cold to go outside I became fascinated with cooking Chinese food. I found ways to cook everything I’ve ever eaten, heard about, and many that I would not have thought to ever cook.
This is great! I thought. I can learn pretty much anything and everything I have the slightest interest in.
Then I started taking a Coursera course on innovation. I’ve always loved the idea of taking classes for the sake of learning and not a degree, and now I have plenty of choices to do so.
Well, I can’t sit through a single lecture (or even a segment, which is <20 minutes long) without opening another browser window to check Facebook, email, feedly, Pinterest, or get to the next level of Candy Crush (omg why did I ever start this?!). If I missed something (and I’m missing plenty of things), I would just rewind the video and re-watch it.
This is interesting stuff! I chose to do it in my free time! Then why can’t I focus and actually pay attention?
Sometimes I feel like there’s just so much I want to learn and process not enough time to do it. But not really true considering I had time to finish an entire season of White Collar, Bones, and Downton Abby in 2 weeks (I was jetlagged!). I have on average ~1000 new articles in my RSS reader everyday, so I just skim instead of read them. I have quite a few half written blog entries in Notes that I can’t concentrate long enough to finish. I have a list of books on my to read shelf, and they’ve been there for quite a while.
I think I still have the curiosity that’s been a driving force in my life, but there’s just TOO MUCH INFO! It’s so easy to get distracted, like look up how to fix your jeans while listening to a lecture on innovation. In the old days, when the thought “I need to fix my jeans” flashes in my mind while I’m in class, it’s a passing thought and I can go back to the lecture quickly. Now, the Internet indulges my sudden urges for any kind of information, and when it’s as easy as opening another browser, I have very little self control. After all, the video lecture will still be there when I satisfy my other curiosity. I also have the lecture notes already printed if I ever need to reference it.
When knowledge and information is so easily to come by, we start to take it for granted, and retain less and less of it in our brains. As long as you have a smartphone and data connection, you can look up anything and everything whenever, wherever. It’s sad how difficult we’ve made it for ourselves to learn when there are now so many different channels to learn. People have a way of not treasuring the good things in life until they are rare, or worse yet — gone.
Heading to Lisbon today. At least I will get a full 10 hours of Internet free time where I will be forced to finish a book or something 😛
BTW, I also wrote this blog between 2 lecture videos. -_-
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