Tues Ten 082509: Slow Things

I’m exercising a bit of economy today with this post because I’ve just finished the most profound article I think I’ve read in a while. Something I saw on Twitter yesterday prompted me to begin my original Tuesday Ten post as a semi-rant on things I hate reading in 140 characters or less. Actually, they were just things I hate reading, only made more annoying by their dumbed down, misspelled, or speed edited 140-character summaries. The headliner? Trashing your kids or your husband to your 1,637 followers! Holy Badmovimous, Twatman! If you can’t say something nice…

Of course, I was faced with a conundrum because to write the Tuesday Ten post that leaped from my Tweetdeck screen would mean violating one of my own personal social media rules: It may be sarcastic or annoyed. It may be fed up or fatigued. But, in the end, it better be positive. Ix-Nay on the post about Itter-Tway.

Then, I read this article from the August 22 Wall Street Journal by John Freeman (actually found from a link on… Twitter). The poignant sound of Mr. Freeman’s name–Free. Man.– was not lost on me as I read “Not So Fast”, his treatise on the value of slow communication. He certainly seems free from the “Tyranny of Email”, the apparent title of his upcoming book related to the article.

So, for economy’s sake, I decided to write today’s post as a Tuesday Ten and Most Interesting Phrase Paragraph of the Week (MIPOTW) all rolled into one. How very efficient of writer Haley.

Mr. Freeman’s absolutely on-target thoughts about the drawbacks of the hyper-communicative world we’ve created made me want to sit down for a moment. Hopped up on bandwidth with 140 (or so) characters at our disposal and a thousand “Joe Bloes” listening, we’ve become so enamored of the outflux of information that we are less mindful of what we’re really saying–and even less attentive to what really matters. Is that progress?

In an article full of interesting phrases and paragraphs and concepts, Mr. Freeman’s idictment of the internet is that:

“It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget.”

His recommendation? Spend more time in the slow lane.

“If the technology is to be used for the betterment of human life, we must reassert that the Internet and its virtual information space is not a world unto itself but a supplement to our existing world…

Given that our days are limited, our hours precious, we have to decide what we want to do, what we want to say, what and who we care about, and how we want to allocate our time to these things within the limits that do not and cannot change. In short, we need to slow down.”

With that in mind, I give you a new and improved, more progressive Tuesday Ten: Ten [wonderfully slower than dial-up] Things I’ll never get from the internet.

1. A spit-kiss from a preschool boy

2. A glistening glass of sweetened, iced tea

3. Crumbs on my shirt from the warm sweet roll I just baked

4. The smell of a library book

5. An early Fall breeze

6. Freshly folded clean clothes

7. Sweaty, dirt-filled giggly faces in need of a wet washcloth

8. Conversation with chocolate sprinkles on top

9. The chance to hold the hand of the one I’m listening to

10. Baby Girl’s first steps accompanied brothers’ cheers.