While interesting, I have to ask, what makes reading books, watching TV, and watching movies higher value than whatever it is you're doing on the internet?
I learn about travel, science, technology, and countless other things through the internet. While not a replacement for real life experiences, I certainly think it could be considered a high-value experience (personally I think it is better than TV), perhaps on par with reading books.
Sure, if you're spending all your time playing minecraft online... wait we have kids building graphing calculators in minecraft, nevermind.
When you're on the internet, you're engaging in bite-size activities and constant task switching. Quick, how many tabs do you have open right now?
Until about 1999 or 2000, I accomplished at least four times as much per year as I do today. Before that time, there either was no Web to putter around on, or it existed but without the speed and content it has had since then.
Have you ever noticed that your best ideas come when you're in the shower, or maybe on a long drive alone? It's down to focus, and lack of distractions.
Even if you think you're reading long-form journalism or other content online, you're most likely doing it in a window of a browser, with visual clutter all around, from UI elements to menu items to the dock at the bottom of the screen. They're all subtle cues to your mind to stay alert for extra input, and not get too zoned in on whatever you're reading. Not to mention the amazing amount of visual crap most webpages surround their content with.
There's value to the vast amount of information available online, but you have to be discerning. Information for the sake of information is not always worth the mental and time tradeoffs we make for it.
Perhaps I'm just bad at doing things, but I noticed this way before the internet. Something like this random-walk path: reading a semi-scholarly book, run into an endnote, turn to the end of the book to read it, find a concept I don't know, open up my dead-tree World Book encyclopedia to find it, follow up some cross-references there, eventually remember to go back to the book, try to remember what endnote I was reading and where I got there from, restart. The internet makes it easier, but the pattern doesn't seem new!
It's even worse in university libraries, where you can actually follow up all the references by grabbing them off the shelf. The number of books piled up around you with post-it notes marking pages is roughly like the number-of-tabs metric...
I'm vaguely sympathetic to that viewpoint, but also do think changing your environment matters. Humans are weird creatures, and not really made up of completely disembodied rational minds. Even simple things like choosing to read in one location versus another seem to make significant differences, so I can see not having internet at home making differences too (some positive, some negative).
I had no internet in my apt for a few months, and it was also right after I had moved to a new city (it was semi-accidental, due to bullshit with a "pre-wired for ethernet" apartment that I took way longer to give up on than I should have). The mixture of having no internet and not much else in the apt was interesting. It was easier to unwind at the end of the day; go home, cook, read a magazine or book, go to bed. There just wasn't enough in the house to keep me up.
It's true that when you have the internet, with all the information and possibilities, it's like I have both an entire library and an entire workshop always available to me. And how am I going to go to sleep in the middle of all that? But I think it was also important I didn't have much else in my apartment at the time; if I had had a bunch of dead-tree encyclopedias, novels, magazines, etc., I would've just read those.
I can see that, but I also see cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Has anything less drastic been tried? Like, for example, making Internet access only available to one computer in the household?
If one believes that home Internet access is a bad value proposition I could see that, I guess, but this is such a foreign view point that I don't see how I could have anything to add.
Books? I have a Kindle. TV? I don't have cable, I subscribe to Netflix and Hulu+. Cooking? I find many recipes online. Purchasing things? I buy a lot on Amazon. Keeping in touch with friends? Email, gchat, IRC, facebook, etc.
The Internet isn't a product. It isn't even a technology. It's an efficient overlay communication network. If you communicate with the outside world it can make everything you do better. If one doesn't, then maybe one has no purpose for it but then I have no purpose for that viewpoint because that life doesn't even exist to me.
Ah, the prerogative of youth: assuming that because you don't understand something, it must be simple. And that anybody who thinks otherwise is just a fool.
The solution I proposed was perhaps flippant, but not ill-thought out.
I stand by my claim that the fundamental problem that the author has is not with the Internet, it's with their willpower.
I read the same article as you many years ago when it was first published.
My conclusion, however, was different from yours. You seem to have stopped at "manipulate your environment to change how you behave." I preferred the conclusion, "manipulate your environment to change how you think." When I have distraction problems with the Internet I'll restructure my environment to provide gratification in different ways. If Internet browsing is rewarding to me to the point where it causes a distraction it now becomes an effective reward mechanism. I can make a schedule wherein a certain amount of work is rewarded with a small amount of Hacker News.
Moreover, the entire Internet isn't to blame for this person's problem, only a certain set of behavior on the Internet. They describe how slower or less rich internet didn't present a distraction. Why not cap their connection speed or disable images, javascript, and sound?
I see many options and "get rid of the Internet" seems the most naive and harmful in this case.
Actually, I think your "solution" was both flippant and ill-thought out.
"Just read a book" isn't a solution at all. It doesn't work, and it displays willful ignorance of how willpower works.
I'm glad to see you have now responded with some more nuanced notions, but your arrogant "duh, he's doing it wrong" tone still grates. In particular, you assume that he couldn't possibly have thought about the issues you raise. Maybe if you started with the assumption that he has considered them you'd get someplace more interesting.
TFA is basically telling us that the route to success in life is to turn off one's home internet service so he or she could live as Americans did in 1985; purporting that way of life to be superior in some way because the occupations of time used several physical items instead of just a computing device.
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If you want to read a book, you take a book, open it, and begin reading.
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If you're still having trouble reading it, maybe you don't actually want to read it as much as you are telling yourself you do. Be honest with yourself, listen to yourself, and don't force yourself to be something you're not. If you can't find some psychological lever to help you begin learning to code, or learn French, or to stop playing WOW - something important in your life which makes you want to do this - maybe you should step back and reexamine your life and priorities.
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Reading a book shouldn't drain one's willpower; if it is you're doing it wrong.
TFA is not telling us that. He's just saying he's trying an experiment. And he's not saying that the physical items are superior. He talks about watching video and doing email and posting to blogs, so he's obviously ok with virtual things.
Also, it sounds like he really does want to do the book reading, in that's what he went and did once he was less distracted. And then tried an experiment to see how he could bring back more of that.
Also, your "it's just that simple" line is contradicted by a lot of research on willpower. (Which, hint hint, I linked.) Maybe it really works that way for you, in which case: bravo, you magnificent alien. But it doesn't work that way for most people, including the the author of the initial article.
Some books are easy books. Other books are hard, but worth the work. Some things are quick and easy gratification, but other only pay off after a while. For humans, at least, one has to set aside the former if you want to pursue the latter.
"The prerogative of youth" rings somewhat ageist to me when people of all ages express similar foolish ideas. Let's not indict youth or overlook the views of the 'more experienced' who still harbor a fundamental misunderstanding of people.
I agree that there are fools of all ages. But I think confusing "at first blush X seems obvious to me" with "duh, X is totally obvious, fool" is something that most people get over.
Age may not bring wisdom, but it does mean more experience. In this case, the experience of thinking that something is utterly simple, having your ass handed to you, and being forced to recognize that apparently simple things are often fiendishly subtle.
While I understand what you're saying, his deliberate choice is a form of self control.
"I don't have home internet" is more of a stand-in for "Removing the distraction of the internet is a working form of self control for me" than for "I don't have self control".
There's quite a bit of evidence that willpower is a limited resource [1]. Eg if you're on a diet and have to resist eating chocolate, you'll accomplish less at work. So solutions that let you get away without having to exercise self-control are much more useful than solutions that require expending willpower.
It reeks of ad-hom, it's a bad explanation. It has no more explanatory power than "because you're a bad person". It's nothing more than a way to feel smug with sciencey sounding buzzwords.
If you want to read a book, just get off the computer and read a book.
Really? I guess I'll "just" stop all my bad habits and replace them with good habits as well, shall I? And I'll "just" stop playing wrong notes on the piano too.
Because, y'know, there's no reason I'm playing wrong notes, is there? There's no reason I have bad habits continuing year on year, there's no reason he's spending too much time on the internet, no complex interplay of a lifetime of biological, neurological and psychological drives and feedbacks, right? Humans are simple. That's why there are no problems in the world and everyone "just" is the ideal person they want to be.
It's easy to avoid playing wrong notes on a piano. Just don't play the piano.
Nobody is saying that it's easy to avoid internet distraction while using the internet. But it is easy to block out a few hours of not using the internet even if you are paying for a connection. It's quite similar to not going to a coffee shop for the same few hours.
OP here. I think it depends on your habits and situation. For me, avoiding the cafe for 4 hours is a lot easier than ignoring my computer and phone for 4 hours.
To use the internet at the cafe, I have to put on my shoes, my coat, walk 5 minutes, buy a coffee, sit down, open my computer, etc.
It's not hard to do any of that. But it's a lot more effort than pulling my phone out of my pocket.
And, having gone through doing all that, presumably once you get there, you feel a stronger to at least accomplish something, to vindicate your efforts. :-).
It's one of the main reasons I find value in having an office, and it is a non-trivial (though, thankfully, subway-based) commute away.
There's no reason I have bad habits continuing year on year, there's no reason he's spending too much time on the internet
I addressed that rather simply, I thought. It seems that his biggest problem with the Internet was that it was too easily accessible. Not having Internet is a very obdurate way of approaching this, in my opinion. Note that most of the things the writer did as an alternative were not on the computer. Instead of separating the Internet from their computer, I simply suggested separating themselves from the computer.
Well put. IIRC pg has two computers, one on the Internet for surfing and stuff, and the other off the Internet and physically distant from the first that's used for work.
I think a good portion of it is how much you want to be distracted. I've had internet access since 95. High speed since 96ish. In that time, I've had both distracted and focused periods. Distractions don't come from the internet unless I want them to. In fact, most of my distractions come from around the house. Sure I haven't read "War and Peace" in a week but: a) I read slow. b) I don't have that kind of free time.
> When you're on the internet, you're engaging in bite-size activities and constant task switching.
Sometimes. Sometimes I'm doing one thing and focusing on it.
> Quick, how many tabs do you have open right now?
Not the greatest metric. When I'm working, I often have like seven tabs open, all about what I'm focused on working on. So why would we assume that "number of tabs" is a better indicator of unfocus when discussing leisure time?
If I am stuck on a tough coding problem, I take a pen and notepad and go to the local coffee shop for an hour or two. I leave behind the phone and laptop. Just doodle, write, think, and drink. Having an IDE open and staring at me is just too intimidating when trying to think high-level.
OP here. Very good question, I should have made this clearer in my post.
The internet is extremely useful. I've learned more from Hacker News alone over the past year than I could have learned from any book. I don't need to list the other benefits; everyone here knows the Internet's advantages.
But...there is a point of diminishing returns. 30-60 minutes of aimless wandering each day can be highly useful. It's the equivalent of keeping your office door open. Can be distracting, but you learn a lot. But I find that if you spend too long on the internet, the value starts to drop off.
But there is much value in reading a book cover to cover, or focussing on a project for hours at a time. I find these things easier to do if I don't have to resist the temptation of the internet in order to do them.
Disconnecting my home connecting was a conscious decision based on the fact that I was spending more time online than I would prefer, and not enough time doing other valuable things. But I do not mean to say that time online is not valuable - far from it.
p.s. TV was a bad example; I don't watch any now. I only included that to show how much time was freed up.
I was going to say similar, but there you go, you said it.
Granted you need to prioritize when there are deadlines, but reading books and / or watching TV can be equally distracting.
Another point I would like to add is that internet, for better and for worse, changes our role from a knowledge consumer to that of a knowledge contributor. which when applied properly, can lead to new questions, new ideas and new conversations.
It is because of the internet, Learning has become dynamic, and humanity is for the better.
I learn about travel, science, technology, and countless other things through the internet. While not a replacement for real life experiences, I certainly think it could be considered a high-value experience (personally I think it is better than TV), perhaps on par with reading books.
Sure, if you're spending all your time playing minecraft online... wait we have kids building graphing calculators in minecraft, nevermind.