Like I Have Time For This?

A friend of mine recommended this month’s cover story over at the Atlantic Monthly, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid“, by Nicholas Carr, and now that I’ve read it, I’d like to recommend it to you. It’s a somewhat long article, so if you’re stopping by my blog during a tiny little hiatus in your work day, I’d say wait until lunch or until tonight when you’ve got some time to really sit down and read it.

Because that’s what it’s about really…how we simply can’t sit down and read a long article or book anymore. How the Internet is changing our brain, how constant data streams of smaller bits of information, snatched in brief moments of fleeting free time might actually have a lasting and permanent impact on our brain’s mapping and chemistry and all that shit. How today’s modern reader may no longer be able to sit down and lose themselves in War and Peace.

And you know, I’m not surprised. At all.

I haven’t been online much the past few days. Sunday was RegularNephew’s first birthday, so we drove on up to RegularSis’s house and had ourselves a little party at a nearby Chili’s.

And then yesterday, RegularDad had the day off so we spent the day cleaning out the laundry room and making yet more progress on the giant home project we like to call UNPACKING, which is really just us opening up box after box after box of utter CRAP, looking blankly at the contents, scratching our heads quizzically, and then transferring the contents of the box directly into the trash bin and hiding when the trash truck comes because these guys must think we’re nuts by now, or if not nuts, at least a family of people recovering from that weird pack rat syndrome.

And then today, it was back to a regular schedule, but the truth is, my regular schedule doesn’t exactly allow for a lot of free surfin’ time, especially when my day includes writing time. And days that include writing time are days in which I feel better about my life choices and my parenting skills, and I yell less, so we try to make those days happen a lot.

It wasn’t until almost 9:00 tonight that I was finally able to sit down and open my blog and see what I wanted to say. And the thing is: that’s okay. A few days away from the Internet was downright refreshing.

Because I’m one of those weird people who exists on the outer fringe of all this. Who still likes to read long, complicated books, who still wants to get the paper ON PAPER and flip lazily through the pages while sipping coffee and eating bagels and listening to the kids fight over the comics.

I want to use the Internet for all the good it has to offer, but not be consumed by it. I want to close my browser and go get myself a copy of something by Dickens or Tolstoy and go sit outside with a glass of iced tea with it, and curse when the condensation drips onto the pages and wipe away the water with my finger and just keep reading.

And I’m sitting here wondering if that’s just a naive little pipe dream. 

Here’s a memorable quote from the article:

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us.

Reprogramming. That’s a word to keep you up later than usual tonight. You will be have been assimilated.

And even in spite of my wants and wishes, in spite of my best efforts, I also am changed because of the Internet. I had just settled down to read this long-ish article (off my laptop — no printed copy here) and as I hit paragraph 3 in which Carr addresses how difficult it’s become to immerse oneself in a long article or a book, I found my attention had wandered from the text to things like possible blog titles for the entry I planned to write on this topic, to wondering if anyone else had already blogged on this yet, and then a quick glance at the scroll bar at the right, to check it’s length and position on the screen so as to gauge just how long this article would be and how far I’d come in it, and on and on and on. I kept having to force my brain back to the words in front of me, force myself to concentrate on the meaning behind the words, which was of course, how hard it is to make today’s brains concentrate on anything longer than news blips on Yahoo’s homepage or the latest YouTube video.

And then I think about how schools are using the Internet now, and how computers have become essential tools in the classroom, and how no one is reading books anymore, and I just want to run screaming down the street because there’s just no way to make any of it stop, but instead of doing that, I find myself once again renegotiating my stopping point, and mentally redrawing my line in the sand, lips pressed flat and determind, knowing that pretty soon something else will come up and I’ll be doing this again. And again. And again.

And then, I pick up our copy of Gilgamesh, or perhaps The Iliad, and read it to my children again. I barricade them and myself behind a great wall of printed words, because that’s all I can think of, and when they ask to go online to visit their Webkinz, I smile and say, “Maybe later.”

Ouch.

Today we went to an “Old Fashioned Field Day” hosted by one of our homeschool clubs. The girls ran foot races, sack races, sponge races, egg tosses, not to mention the infamous water balloon toss which turned into a gigantic water balloon fight and fiasco. But in a nice way, ya know?

It was HOT, of course. We’re in the throes of our first heat wave of the season here, and it’s Barely Tolerable. The girls opted out of the final Tug of War match just because they were Too. Damn. Hot. Luckily, there was a reasonably priced community pool right across the street from the park where we had our Field Day. So, after lunch, a bunch of us went over there and spent a nice afternoon swimming together. The girls all picked mermaid names from various Barbie movies and spent a good hour playing a very elaborate game based somehow on at least two different Barbie movies. It was cute. Then we just sort of swam around. For a long time.

And even in spite of the sunscreen, we’re all a little lobster-colored now. But it was still a great day.

And I’m sitting here now thinking about how “mainstream” homeschooling is becoming. All those arguments about socialization are rapidly becoming meaningless as hundreds of thousands of people opt to homeschool and then go online and find other people who have opted for the same, and then (GASP!!!) actually form groups so that they can all be… like… social… together. Nicely.

There’s even a homeschool prom in these here parts, believe it or not.

Yep. It’s true. A bunch of homeschoolers a little north of here got together and decided to do a smallish prom this year. And, so they did. And the unsocialized homeschooled teenagers that attended this prom were so nice to each other, and so well-behaved, and so SOCIALIZED TO BEHAVE LIKE GOOD, DECENT, UP AND COMING CITIZENS OF THEIR COMMUNITIES, that the hotel staff working that night were FLOORED. They couldn’t stop gushing about how wonderful those children were. And then the local paper got wind of this, and they sent over a reporter, and now the Homeschool Prom is receiving accolades from the local journalists.

No one, from the wait-staff at the hotel to the reporters, had ever seen anything like it. Or so they said.

And why am I the only one around here that thinks that’s sad? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m cheering like mad for those homeschoolin’ teens who know how to behave at a prom, and yes it makes us LOOK FABULOUS, and I can’t even BEGIN to tell you how thrilled I am that I now have this little hidden gem of a bullet stored away in my arsenal for when my mother-in-law asks: BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PRRRROMMMMMM?????

But I’m also a little sad for all those other kids who went to their proms with agendas nonspecific to dancing and enjoying themselves. Because, so often, there is a completely different agenda on prom night, isn’t there?

Oh, well. No sense losing sleep over it, I guess. The world will be what the world will be.

But at least homeschooling is grabbing on a little more. And a little more. And each day, just a little more. Because if enough people start homeschooling, then eventually, things could start to self-correct, a little more here and there, slowly over time. We’d begin to see a bit of shift away from the endless crops of unhealthy, unhappy, unprepared young adults, to generations of people who were actually ready to take on this world and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. And eventually, maybe, that could make a difference globally.

I know, I know… it’s a stretch. But how else do we grow stronger without stretching a little first?

Think about it.