I read a recent blog post mourning the loss of curation (of film, TV, music, books) as a practice. I read this post and began to reflect on the ways I engage with media, and in particular, how I often feel inundated by information. There are just so many books to read, shows to watch, articles to read, podcasts to listen to. Sometimes the choice can be paralyzing: do you ever listen to something for a few minutes, only to reconsider the opportunity cost of that listening, switch to something else of higher ‘quality’ (define that for yourself), only to say “to hell with it” and put on some music instead? I’m not convinced this problem would really go away if there was a resurgence in curation and criticism of art and media, given how much media we humans generate. Taking movie production as a proxy for all media, it seems like the rate at which we are producing content continues to increase. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the second derivative is positive, too.)
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the internet and everything it has to offer. Through the internet, I’ve discovered an inordinate number of great movies, books, language communities, and so much more. The problem is not the availability of information but the conundrum of what to do in the face of it. I’ve discussed this problem with numerous friends and the repeated feelings this seems to induce are roughly:
- “I feel obliged to constantly fill my time with something” (the productivity imperative)
- “I scrolled on Netflix for about 20 minutes trying to find something, eventually giving up because there’s so much to choose from” (paradox of choice)
- “I often feel dissatisfied with what the content I’m consuming, because I’m afraid there’s something more pertinent to me out there” (opportunity cost)
- “I feel like I have to record everything I do - use Letterboxd for my movies, Yelp for my restaurants, Strava for my workouts, Goodreads for my books” (gamification and tracking)
I’ve classified these sentiments into four broad themes: the productivity imperative, the paradox of choice, opportunity cost, and gamification. I don’t feel I have many original thoughts on the first two, so I’ll focus on the latter two instead.
opportunity cost: One consequence of having the entire wealth of human history and knowledge at our fingertips is that one human lifetime will never be enough to exhaust all of it. At best, we can try our best to separate the wheat from the chaff, thinking critically about what we watch and listen to. I think the antedote to the annoying feeling that every decision we make to engage with some content is a tradeoff, is the satisfaction that comes from really trying to understand the content we choose to engage with.
I think it’s also interesting to think about the language people use around TV shows and podcasts: I often hear people talk about what content they’re “consuming” or what show they recently “binged”. It’s like each episode of the White Lotus is a bar of dark chocolate that you get to treat yourself to at the end of a long day. I don’t think it’s any accident that we use this nutritional metaphor. Mindless consumption of information might leave you feeling bloated, so perhaps throttling our information diet is in order. This makes me wonder whether paying attention to fewer things - or just generally consuming less information - might help situate existing knowledge in a broader context. If we spend less cognitive effort on filtering, then we have greater reserves for critical thinking. To go a step further, thinking about these decisions as incurring opportunity cost may not be the correct framing. Perhaps the correct framing is each decision is instead an opportunity to think critically.
gamification and tracking: I think it’s interesting to think about how gamification can make it easier to do what your ‘best self’ wants to do. If you want to become a better runner, then using something like Strava to enroll yourself in a monthly distance goal is a good way to achieve that goal through gamification. Depending on your personality and how much free time you have, it’s possible to start optimizing to ‘win’ at the game. (I can remember racing around my home town on a bike trying to become the leader on Strava segments nearby.) Gamification is good insofar as it actually helps you get to where you want to be; otherwise it’s a distraction.
Similarly with tracking things, be it restaurants, books, countries, whatever. Using technology to log how we interact with the world can be both fun and revealing, but as with gamification, as soon as you begin to make decisions differently because you some information will be logged somewhere, that’s when to pause for reflection. Do you really have to visit every Mexican restaurant in your neighborhood just because Yelp told you that you’ve only got 3 to go? (I’m not a Yelp user so I don’t know if it does this, but you get the point.) To share an anecdote, I accidentally erased my Google Maps movement history late last year, to find myself panic-stricken that I wouldn’t be able to see where I had been. Why did I care that I could no longer know my precise movements on July 13, 2018? It was like the information had sentimental value to me because it was generated by decisions that I, and no one else, had made. But what actual utility would this information ever have to me? After a few minutes of dwelling on this, I realized it had very little sentimental or practical value to me. Because I have this wet spongey blob in between my two ears which stores memories for me, having this external record (while it’s probably much higher fidelity) seemed unnecessary.
As a closing thought, I encourage you to look at how you engage with information in the digital world. If you feel inundated, how can you reframe the access you have to the world in a way that makes you excited and gives you a sense of agency? When it comes to platforms, I encourage you to ask: does the technology serve me, or is my behaviour being manipulated for some ulterior motive?