Clay Shirky’s media diet longview
Clay Shirky describes his media diet to the Atlantic. The whole thing’s a good read (and at the end there are links to media habits of other interesting people), but here’s the part that caught my eye:
In general, there’s no real breaking news that matters to me. I don’t have any alerts or notifications on any piece of software I use. My phone is on silent ring, nothing alerts me when I get a Tweet and my e-mail doesn’t tell me when messages arrive.
I also don’t read any of the big tech aggregators. Knowing that, for instance, Google just bought Blogger, isn’t that useful for me to hear today rather than tomorrow. Some of Michael Arrington’s stuff I think is an example of the worst kind of breaking news. The kind of Apple Insider stuff where they publish something every day to satisfy the news cycle. It’s gossip coverage like following movie stars and it distracts me from thinking longer form thoughts. …
For decades, I religiously read the op-ed pages of the New York Times but recently I’ve stopped because every op-ed is so closely tied to a newspeg that the thinking never gets very far from current events. So I’ve recently gotten away from the daily news cycle. I’ve got a weekly clock cycle and a monthly clock cycle. Time is a precious commodity. Increasingly, I’m trying to maximize it.
Several things strike me about this. First, I’m happy to find a kindred soul who doesn’t read news. People are surprised when I tell them that I don’t read newspapers and simply get my “news” from the ether. It’s a great way to make conversation: “So what happened with some baseball umpire yesterday?” Related to this is what I perceive as the increasing futility of the op-ed, or even blogging about current events, especially the latest policy turn in the tech or telecom sectors that I follow. It’s the same script, over and over, same arguments, slightly different sets of facts.
Finally, it seems like Shirky is accepting Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet is distracting us and changing the way we think to the point where we can’t think deep thoughts any longer. At the same time, he’s offering a solution: turn it off. You don’t have to check it every five minutes. Unfortunately for most people, that’s easier said that done and requires lots of discipline. But, being aware of the issue is the first step toward addressing it.
FYI: Nick Carr will be the guest on my interview podcast on Monday and Clay Shirky will be the guest the following Monday (6/14). You can subscribe on iTunes.
