The most important choice we’ll ever make
How we choose to consume the internet will determine the course of our future more than just about anything else.
The past couple of days have left me in a funk. I felt lethargic and ill at ease. The source of my funk wasn’t my diet, lack of exercise or a seasonal flu. It was much more insidious. The Feeds — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Feedly and, yes, even Medium — trapped me in an infinite loop of distraction. Everything from daily news to quick takes and topics of varying kinds would lead me down rabbit holes that had nothing to do with anything I wanted to make progress on in my work and life.
Each click took me further and further away from where I wanted and needed to be. That loss of control drained my energy and frustrated my will. My exploration of the Internet was a desperate clawing for something more interesting than the last thing, rather than an intentional act of learning.
The dog from the animated film UP had more focus.
The ‘latest’ trap
This goes back to a bad habit I cultivated during my time in journalism: always looking for the latest on the internet rather than the best or most relevant. If something had a timestamp later than six hours from the time I encountered it, it was already old news and a waste of my time.
Rather than sit quietly with long reads and musty tomes locked in intricate research projects as I wanted to be, I spent days hanging on to the bumper of an information race car with my teeth. The past few years have been an exercise in reversing the terrible habit of approaching the internet on the defensive, and that work is difficult. Only recently have I allowed myself to not only read but more highly value pieces with date stamps from prior months and years.
Rather than sit quietly with long reads and musty tomes locked in intricate research projects as I wanted to be, I spent days hanging on to the bumper of an information race car with my teeth.
Focus failure
Recently, I have been trying to write a book. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what to focus on. Do I focus on design, media, innovation, professional development, my own life experience? Answering this kind of a question requires an incredible amount of focus. Focus is difficult to come by given my reading habits, which largely consist of scanning, skimming and screening for what’s new right now. Executing on the work of writing also requires dedication to a singular topic or theme and long spans of dedicated time … but ….
… that tweet tho’…oh, and look <insert name of friend here> had a baby! Like! er, wait, Love! … and that predictions piece from Wired looks good … wait, Taraji didn’t get an Oscar nom!? WHAT?! …
That rabbit hole of nonsense was the time equivalent of at least 1,000 words I could have written for my book. Instead, I frittered it away aimlessly. The internet is merely a vast library. I can choose to spend all of my time in the periodicals section, or I can go into the science fiction section or spend an afternoon flipping through art and architecture books. I choose.
I choose whether the internet will either assist in my book writing, or it will distract me from it. I choose whether it will be the tool through which I learn Mandarin Chinese, or the means by which I consume the entirety of the Amazon Prime movie collection of documentaries (which isn’t the worst way to spend one’s time, but I’d much rather come out the other end with a new language).
Why am I on the internet?
Take a moment to ask yourself this question: Why am I on the internet? Each of us — billions of us — make the choice to go online every day, but how many of us take a moment to ask ourselves why we are online?
It is not a surprise, but it bears repeating: What you choose to do online matters, so it’s worth taking a moment to ask yourself why you’re online in the first place. Are we on the internet to feed the phenomenon of “bad news”, chasing people who agree with us and lambasting those who don’t? Or are we on the internet to augment our existing knowledge about a skill or topic or discover new skills or insights about history and science? How we answer that question will determine which innovations succeed and fail.
Speaking of innovation, that’s what I chose to research today for the book. I wanted to start from zero with the word, which I posit needs to be transferred away from the hands of business (particularly the tech sector). It needs to be given over fully to communities, educators and other sectors that will drive the cultural revolution brought on by our technological one.
Each of us — billions of us — make the choice to go online every day, but how many of us take a moment to ask ourselves why we are online?
So, I am exploring Wordnik, an old EdSurge piece and another one from Motherboard on the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (which Elizabeth Garbee writing for Slate declares is not a thing — at least not any more so than it has been for the last 75 years). This video on the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” from The World Economic Forum is a nice summary of its latest iteration, though. I’d have never gone through these pieces, had I not made the active choice to explore a topic deliberately, rather than merely swim in the feed of the latest content.
The cost of self-directed internet exploration
The interesting (though not surprising) thing I am coming across in this more self-directed exploration of the web is how much I want the content that sits behind paywalls. The greater my intention to get specific, in-depth information, the more tugs I feel on my wallet.
The piece titled, “Is radical innovation a thing of the past?” from The Financial Times is behind a paywall. I want to go back and read Clay Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma”, but I want to be able to take digital notes this time around. So, I need to pay to get it sent to my Kindle. Then there’s the writings from Christensen and Peter Drucker on Harvard Business Review. I’ve already blown through my free articles for the month, so I’ll need to pay for that too.
The information worth having is more often than not still hiding behind walls. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of wonderful content to consume online for the cost of your internet connection. But it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of abundance and a belief that there is unlimited, open access. There’s a lot of information online, but the really wonderful stuff — the stuff we can really use — is worth paying for and people are increasingly (and rightfully) asking to be paid for it. That quickly becomes apparent when you start engaging in a purposeful search for meaningful, useful information.
If you’re exploring the internet and not hitting a pay wall, you’re doing the internet wrong.
The more often we attack the internet with well-crafted intention and take the upper hand on distraction, the more we will encounter these walls. The more we do so, however, the better off we will be as a society. I’d go so far as to argue that if you’re exploring the internet and not hitting a pay wall, you’re doing the internet wrong.
Much of the innovation folks are talking about in information technology will depend on our ability to be self-directed learners, rather than passive consumers. It will also require us to invest in knowledge in ways we have been taking for granted, or assuming we’re getting when we’re not. The new age of work will be one where those who make the choice to invest in information online with independent and clear purpose, will rise. Those who succumb to distraction and are lured into the vat of free information will not.
Enter the local library
Rather than see a dour future of information restriction and censorship, I instead see a future where libraries come back with a vengeance and communities pool resources to invest in information access for their members.
Lifehacker recently featured an Amazon extension that will allow you to see if books you’d like to read are available at your local library. Knight Foundation has also poured millions into the revitalization of and innovation in and around libraries. They’re not doing it because it’s cute, but because free and open access to quality information matters. It is critical not only for our personal health and wellbeing but for the continuation of our democracy. It will determine whether we are able to make the well-ordered and equitable political and economic systems we desire — or not.
So, allow me to join the throngs of people who urge you to be careful with your clicks. You’re not just clicking for you, you’re clicking for all of us. It is, perhaps, one of the purest forms of democracy we have, and each of your click-votes count.
I run a consultancy at the crossroads of human-centered design, media, policy and professional development. I recently gave a TEDx talk on the need for a marriage of design and unconscious bias in professional development and media training.
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