Living and Learning in Snippets

Copyright © 2006 Ethan A. Winning

I'm almost up to date. I use Mozilla Firefox, a tabbed browser which has changed the way I access the Web. I have a cable modem which speeds access to audio and video clips from a myriad of news services. I have online subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, and have tabbed everything from Comcast News which gets me bits and pieces from all services from MSNBC to Fox to CBS and ABC and who knows what else. I also have tabs to the Chronicle which gives me a slanted view of life in general, C|Net for reasons I don't remember, and USA Today, also for reasons I can't remember.

I also get the print version of the CoCo Times, the real local paper, but owned by Knight-Ridder or sold by Knight-Ridder: doesn't matter since I don't see the change, don't read the editorials (my wife will alert me), and haven't seen my name in the obits. We also get the WSJ in print version because my wife likes tactile news and I get a discount to the online subscription.

Even my legal database that I subscribe to is on a tab. Not that that speeds up my search for anything with more than two words like "wage orders and overtime."

I've had TiVo for four years which has changed the way in which I watch television. I have 102 channels, most in English, and seven of which I check in on periodically.

On Firefox, I also have a tab to Amazon.com allowing me to stay indoors most of the year. It has also meant that I haven't been to a mall in four years and, if at all possible, will not go to one for the next twenty. The toolbar also has a dictionary/thesaurus, and it's entirely possible I will lose the ability to hold more than a paperbound book in a year or two, all but my three typing fingers having atrophied to vestigial organs.

Basically, the only reason my brain hasn't disappeared as well is that I have to keep it sharp in order to remember the commands and functions of the five remotes that I still find necessary: TiVo, TV, CD/DVD, VCR, and cable box. I would have bought a universal remote, but Amazon doesn't have one that got really, really good reviews for operating a DVR. And my brother-in-law has one, but it cost him $600 and he forgot to change the batteries and spent another four days programming it. Then he dropped cable, and it seemed like a waste of money.

I do highly recommend the weekly, "The Week," a print version of tabbed browsing. It gives all stories of some import - and even some about Britny, Babra, Brad, and that group with too much money and the new morsel mentality - in no more than two paragraphs. It doesn't seem to have a bent. Probably not enough room to bent or vent. It has book reviews for those who still know how to read; it has movie reviews, none of which I will agree with once it gets to HBO; it has reviews of plays that aren't playing anywhere near here. Best of all, it has one or two pages of political cartoons which, for those of us who love such, give us pictures worth the thousand words. Further, it's a good weekly refresher course for those of us who forgot what we read/saw/listened to on Friday.

Okay, what's this all about? It's about life in the twenty-first century. It's about how we get and process information. It's about a concern I have about me if not you. If I learn anything from my Web subscriptions and my truncated television news watching, it's in bits and pieces. Sound and video bytes and bites that never give the whole story. Such snippets foster my ADD. If I had the attention span of a gnat before, now it's more like a tree stump. Worse, I can't remember half of what I've seen or heard. That's scary. I'm getting one-third of the news and I remember half of that. It's high school algebra problems all over again!

On the plus side, one would think that I could cover the news in an hour, but the truth is that it now takes me three hours to watch or listen to the 50 plus stories just on Comcast.com. Since I can't prioritize what is so unimportant, I then spend another two hours reading the print stories and the WSJ. I still have no idea what's important, so it takes another hour or so to go through the BBS to see what you think is important. After all, you're my audience. You should know what's of value and what can be discarded, a theory which would hold up better if you wouldn't do what I do. Stick to your IE, please.

No, that doesn't work. Most IE users are into messaging and spend even more time on that cornucopia of mostly abbreviated nonsense than I do on news videos. (Note the superiority that I exude when I don't use stuff like IM and ceramic knives.)

What I've done so that I can continue in a consulting capacity is to set aside three hours in the morning going over federal and state labor codes changes - no matter how trivial - and case law and then cataloguing this information should you ever need it. There's been a dearth of useful information this year but, as I've kept warning you, wait until after the election. No matter who wins or loses, someone's going to claim "Mandate!" and we're off and running once more.

In the meantime, should I get rid of tabbed browsing, TiVo, and my "bits and pieces education?" How could you entertain such nonsense? We who are without an attention span wouldn't hear of it. It allows us to go to cocktail parties and fit right in ... if we were willing to leave the house.