The Internet Versus the Noble Savage

Baby Boomers should have something to say about consuming information as a way of life. When we came into this world, the great blight of television befell the world. Today, toward the end of our passage, the internet is taking over. These are two information revolutions just as big as, but far more sudden than, the invention of the alphabet or Gutenberg's movable-type printing press.

Baby Boomers, destined to eventually become America's Worst Generation, started off life as the first generation raised on television. TV-haters (like me) would love to believe that that proves cause and effect.

Whether you buy that or not, it is strange how uncritically many parents welcomed TV into their homes in the 1950s. Soon the living room furniture was all arranged around the TV set. Many children grew up with no restrictions on their TV habits.

How ironic that many a traditional father in the 1950s kept a gun in the house to 'protect his family', you know. And yet he allowed this new-fangled thief to steal his family's time and to rape their minds with commercials. I always wondered why my parents, both teachers, tolerated such a thing.

But the cultural decline associated with television is an old story and need not be rehashed here. Rather than looking back to the TV-blunder of our parents, we should ask if we are making the same mistake today, but with the internet. If we are, there is a bitter irony to it.

Lately I have done a better job at stretching the internet umbilical cord. This has added quite a bit to my sense of freedom, exploration, and the sheer size of North America, which would otherwise collapse precipitously in winter. It has turned out to be strange how invincible the internet addiction seems to be until you snap it; and then you wonder what the big deal was. Maybe this shouldn't be so surprising considering how many more decades a Baby Boomer lived without the internet, than with it. At any rate I'm quite optimistic that I will be able to beat this contemptible addiction. But this is getting ahead of story. First it needs to be explained what is wrong with an internet addiction.

I'll leave Facebook and Twitter out of the discussion since I'm unfamiliar with them, but people familiar with them will usually attest to their trivialness. Internet users with unlimited plans might well have become addicted to news clips from the TV news shows of an hour or two ago. Or perhaps they spent time watching "Wow, look at that!" sort of You Tube videos.

But those of us with limited data plans are forced to read the internet, rather than watch it. Some of the political or economical blogs that I read seem pretty good. But if I'm away from them for awhile, and then come back to them, I usually find the same old issues and soap operas being discussed, e.g., the presidential horse race, the financial crisis in Europe, the fiscal cliff in the USA, etc.

The limiting case of triviality are the travel blogs, of course. But let's be clear: the blogger/photographer is not doing anything wrong in photographing a national park just because his photographs are similar to those of millions of other visitors. He is simply indulging in a natural and harmless urge.

The mistake lies with the viewer/reader, who is squandering his life looking at "information" that is utterly predictable and choked with cliches and stereotypes.

The vaunted high-tech world of the internet has simply become one of those moving, jingling, glittering "mobiles" that Mommy hangs over a crib to keep Baby amused. Our central nervous systems are becoming addicted to continuous trivial (and even annoying) stimulation from an electronic noise and image box.

It goes back a lot further than 1950s of course. The other day I was reading James Boswell's version of the trip to the Hebrides Islands that he and Samuel Johnson took about 1770. He and Johnson  loved the endless bustle of London, and at times Boswell seemed to believe that the short attention span of the city slicker was praise-worthy. But on one of those dreary rainy days in the Hebrides he caught himself:

"I was happy when tea came. Such, I take it, is the state of those who live in the country. Meals are wished for from the cravings of vacuity of mind, as well as from the desire of eating. I was hurt to find even such a temporary feebleness, and that I was so far from being that robust wise man who is sufficient for his own happiness. I felt a kind of lethargy of indolence."

This is the very issue that a serious camper and traveler must confront. They must get good at, and proud of, their ability to fill the vacuity of the day with their own activities. They must entertain themselves rather than depend on habitual consumption of trivial distraction from the outside world, be it from electronic boxes, traffic, stores, restaurants, or the inane chatter of social ritual.