Re:Staring at a Wall: Embracing Deliberate Boredom
by JKCalhoun on Saturday October 28, 2023 @08:56AM
(#38049429)
Road trips are my solution. While driving, no phone! Just miles and hours of staring at the highway.
When the wife takes over driving duties (we work in two-hour shifts) I jot down the ideas that came to me.
(But in fact, phones are boring to me. It's my laptop that robs me of my boredom when at home.)
Re:Staring at a Wall: Embracing Deliberate Boredom
by Apocryphon on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:10AM
(#38049511)
Smartphones are sort of the ultimate mind-occupier in terms of portability, but it seems like for long drives lots of people have just taken to listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
It seems like we’re at a state of FOMO where every moment has to be optimized for stimulation, whether for “unproductive” entertainment or for “productive” learning. If our eyes are too focused on driving then we let our ears instead be our means to become busy away from our present surroundings.
I really wonder what the endgame of all this is. The "attention addiction" enabled by smartphones, and all the apps that are designed by some of the smartest people on the planet whose sole incentive is to keep you addicted, is IMO one of the most detrimental impacts by tech on human happiness in the past 100 years.