An escaped fragment...
Jun. 16th, 2010 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI commented in part one of Reassembling my fragmented mind that the NY Times article "Hooked on Gadgets" was "tragically named," but never explained why.
I own an e-book reader. I've had it since 2002, so I guess I count as a very early adopter. By now, it has thousands of books on it. I have no trouble concentrating on and reading one book at a time on the thing. The idea of leaping into another book instead of the one I'm reading has no appeal to me.
It isn't the content, or the container, it's the network. It is the sense that what's happening now is urgent, important. I've been rewarded with enough frission over the past decades worth of use to have developed bad habits about clicking and reading. I'm sure many of you have as well.
The need to know the news every day is a nervous disorder. The "fierce urgency of now" has "become a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."
I own an e-book reader. I've had it since 2002, so I guess I count as a very early adopter. By now, it has thousands of books on it. I have no trouble concentrating on and reading one book at a time on the thing. The idea of leaping into another book instead of the one I'm reading has no appeal to me.
It isn't the content, or the container, it's the network. It is the sense that what's happening now is urgent, important. I've been rewarded with enough frission over the past decades worth of use to have developed bad habits about clicking and reading. I'm sure many of you have as well.
The need to know the news every day is a nervous disorder. The "fierce urgency of now" has "become a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."
