The continued deletion of people

Posted on by
1

I know I’m not supposed to be reading newspapers, but when I find one left on a train I sometimes flick through.

Anyway, I’m getting increasing concerned by the removal of people. First it was the supermarket (and what a sterile, soulless, joyless place that now is), then it was my bank (no cashiers now, just terminals, with one overworked person with an iPad endlessly explaining to people over the age of 40 (you know, the ones with all the money) why they now have to deal with machines rather than human beings. Above is the latest example.

In theory this might be a good idea. Another channel to contact the police. But we all know what’s going to happen. Mission Creep. It will save the Met a load of money and will eventually be the only way you can contact the police. God forbid your phone gets lost or runs out of battery. And how exactly is an online police station going to provide empathy or reassurance?

Boredom for beginners

Posted on by
Reply

Writing in the Washington Post, Brigid Schulte, a time-use researcher and author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time, quotes an article in a 1959 edition of the Harvard Business Review saying that: “boredom, which used to bother only aristocrats, had become a common curse.” Similarly, in 1960, the US broadcaster Eric Sevareid thought the gravest crisis facing America was: “the rise of leisure”, although this, is an old argument indeed – “Idleness and lack of occupation tend―nay are dragged―towards evil” as Hippocrates observed in Decorum. But we should be careful not to confuse being lazy with being idle. What might be termed ‘strategic idleness’ can pay dividends, as Jack Welch, former CEO of one of the world’s most admired companies, General Electric, would attest. Welch famously spent an hour each day looking out of the window, while Lord Melbourne, a former Prime Minister of Great Britain, praised the value of what he termed “masterful inactivity.”

T-Shirt of the Week

Posted on by
Reply

The idea behind t-shirt of the week (more often month) is a bit like the old section in Wired magazine called Japanese Schoolgirl Watch. This might sound a little iffy, but is actually about trends and, in particular, catching a shift early. (In Japan, School Girls were often onto fashion trends way before anyone else). It’s much the same with bumper stickers and especially t-shirts. They can express a sentiment, micro-trend or weak signal that perhaps isn’t so obvious elsewhere. Normally my t-shirt posts have a social or political angle. This one just made me laugh.

The man know knew too little

Posted on by
2

Back in November 2016, when Trump was elected President of the United States, Erik Hagerman had a plan. Distressed by the hoopla of US politics he decided to stop reading the news. His experiment was part protest, part a coping mechanism and part extreme self-care. Living alone on a pig farm in rural Ohio this was clearly achievable in ways that it might not be had he lived somewhere else like Chicago. Hagerman travels into the local town, Athens, to buy coffee and to shop, but he keeps up his news blockage with the help of white noise from his headphones and an agreement with family and friends not to talk about current events. He does read the art reviews of the New Yorker, browses the classifieds and watches American football with the sound on mute, but otherwise he has been remarkably successful in constructing a world where very little he doesn’t like gets through to him. In this regard, he might be regarded as similar to the hundreds of millions of people that get their news via Facebook, which similarly filters out numerous stories and events. His approach has shades of Thoreau’s Walden too. Previously a senior executive with Nike, Disney and Walmart, he now spends his days (and his money) restoring a disused coal mine into a pristine pond – a project he calls The Lake.

Back in 2018, I personally stopped listening to most news on the TV. I still read a few newspapers, but mostly weekend papers and I read them several weeks, if not months, late. Does this work? In my experience, it does. I’m calmer, I’m able to see connections between ideas and events better, and I can scan the paper (it has to be on paper) faster because I have the benefit of hindsight. Why not try it yourself?