Feedkill
Like many of you, I was glued to the information stream coming out of election night coverage. When you open all the faucets, it’s amazing how much data you can assault your psyche with. But there’s a price to pay for that.
I started by cycling between CNN, NBC, and ABC. Then I opened six tabs in Firefox, with nytimes.com, twitter.com, ccpblogs.com, facebook.com, foxnews.com, and a sandbox tab I used to jump around other local sites. My mail checked for new messages every minute, and I plugged in the iPhone to a charger nearby for SMS.
The games were on.
It started out with a trickle, the polls were closing, and our newly unboxed electronic voting machines were beginning to vomit their data into regional aggregation networks. The blogs were churning out snarkalicious bits on newscaster gaffes and number crunches, and Fox was spinning their Black Panther video. Soon, the creek became the river, and the levees were bursting.
McCain takes Kentucky, Obama gets Vermont. M-West Virginia and South Carolina, O-CT-DE-DC-IL-ME-MD-MA. Maureen-Dowd-says-the-first-16-presidents-could-have-owned-Barack-Obama / CNN Holodeck is launched / Indecision 2008. Localtwitsatwittering / googlereaderlists100newitemsin5minutes.
NBCABCCNNFOXCNNBBCCNNABCNBC-ObamaNJNH-McCainOKTN-everybodyonFacebookispostingdrunk-holycrapobamajusttookpennsylvainahemightjustwinthis … WHAM!
Reaching over to google a factoid from Stephanopoulos and Co., my hand hit the top of a tall Cuba Libre, knocking it into the iBook and dumping its sticky leftovers into the keyboard. My face twisted in shock. Time slowed. All I could hear was a gutteral “nooooooooooo!” echoing from the walls.
Return became F12. Periods and question marks disappeared. I lost p, o, l, n, and shift. It was all just too much. With all the digital noise, concocted punditry, and raw number streams, I lost my nerve and killed a soldier in the process.
Now a week later, with $86 to powerbookmedic.com for a new OEM keyboard and four hours of TLC, the rejuvenated (and painted!) iBook lives again. Now I’ve compiled a few suggestions as part of my information addiction recovery program.
Recovery Step 1: TV-B-Gone
The first is an old favorite of mine, TV-B-Gone. Invented by Mitch Altman, this simple little device has only one function: to turn TVs off. It works by cycling through all the known Infra-Red LED codes for POWER. They’ve miniaturized it into a little black remote that fits on your keychain. Just recently, he made his patented invention open source. Use it often. Use it everywhere.
Recovery Step 2: Reduce Your Feeds
The next step is to reduce your feeds. Do you really want 20 recent items in your RSS reader that say “Barack Obama met with key advisors today, plans to do something”? Load up some more diverting feeds from sites like apeshit.com or kissingsuzykolber.com.
Recovery Step 3: Smart Filters
Also, you can set up “smart filters” on most e-mail clients now. If they find a specific criteria you set, they’ll act on it appropriately.
- The first one I set was: If subject line contains -> 'Watch This' -> Move to Folder -> 'YouTube Videos I’ll Never Watch.'
- A more effective setup is to move all messages with the subject line beginning with “FWD:FWD:” to a folder called “Crap my bored family sends me to stay in touch.” That means it got forwarded to them and they happily forwarded it on to make sure your clean e-mail address gets pwned by lazy spammers.
Recovery Step 4: Get "unFriendly"
Next, it’s time to get unFriendly. Admit it, have you really posted on a high school sweetheart’s wall lately? Didn’t you get a flood of notifications and messages from all those liberal groups your college buddies invited you into? Block people. They don’t get a notification you “unfriended” them. The only way they will know is when you show up in the “people you may know” widget.
Grow a pair. Just Say No.
The work is done. Obama pulled off something incredible. Wake up early tomorrow, go down to Kudu coffee, and READ THE CITY PAPER, old school. Leave the laptop at home. Enjoy the silence (or at least, the trip-hop/indie playlist your barista is pandering to now).