[gorjuss] Tending towards dinosaurism

[Giles Turnbull]

Alexandra Samuel's "Plug in Better" struck a chord as I read it.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/02/plug-in-better-a-manifesto/252873/>

I've been attempting to do just that, for quite a long while. About a
year or so, possibly a bit more.

I recognised that I was over-dependent on external stimuli, and
decided to make an effort to reduce those stimuli. I think it's
working, but it's still ongoing.

One area where I'm sure I've done well is reducing email. I
unsubscribed from a great many lists, and ruthlessly tracked down any
other sources of bulk mail (not spam, but not actual messages from
people either) and either unsubbed, or created straight-to-bin
filters. I reduced my incoming email by an enormous amount, so that
I'm now down to just a couple of dozen incoming messages a day, and
many of them can be read and promptly deleted. Many hours can pass by
without my getting any incoming mail at all.

As well as reducing what was coming in, I took steps to stop email
(and other things) interfering with other work. I have no notification
noises to tell me that new mail has arrived. If Mailplane (the browser
app I use to access Gmail) is open, it will display the number of
unopened messages as a badge on its Dock icon, but other than that
there's nothing nagging me to say "You have new mail." To find out if
I have new mail, I manually open Mailplane and see.

My plan was to check mail at specific times of day - once in the
morning, once at lunchtime, once later. That hasn't worked out so
well, because I often find myself wanting to refer to email messages
(How many words did that editor ask for? What did that guy say about
that app when I asked him?). As a result my mail client sits open, but
hidden, for much of the day.

Beyond email, I decided to simply not bother using Facebook. I've not
deleted my account, but nor do I visit it. I deleted the Facebook app
from my phone. I don't miss it. I've not bothered to sign up for any
new social services (except once or twice, when doing so was required
in order to write an article). The days when I used to sign up early
for everything to grab the "gilest" username have gone. I suspect I'm
starting to think and act and sound like a bit of a dinosaur. Part of
me worries about that, because knowing what's up online is an
important part of how I've earned a crust over the last few years.
Another part of me is very relaxed about it.

I'm not a Google hater, but I'm not terribly keen on all the
Google+iffication that they're doing at the moment. I've switched all
my default searches to DuckDuckGo and I'm happy with it. As with
Facebook, my G+ account is there but largely unused.

On my phone, it's a similar story. I've switched off almost every kind
of notification, alert and badge that I can switch off. My phone
remains pretty quiet, most of the time. Push is switched off, so I
check for mail manually.

I think the theme, for me, has been to reduce the stimuli down to a
small handful of things I care about. So I still faff around on
Flickr. I'm still fairly vocal on Twitter, although days can pass
without me saying or singing anything there. I do still hang around on
a tiny handful of mailing lists (such as underscore, for geeks in the
Bath/Bristol area). I have an internet comfort zone, and I'm trying to
snuggle down inside it.