Deleting the News
Deleting the News
... and other useless sketches from my holiday notebook.
Another Monday, Another Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.
I’m back again from a week’s holiday. When I returned home I started by deleting all emails that did not directly relate to me, hence I reached Inbox Zero by the end of Monday. It was magic, but not as magically as being (almost) offline for one week.
I didn’t read anything related to Technology or Internet Culture, so I won’t share any links this week. Instead I’ll provide you with questions I asked myself and notes I wrote in my notebook. By next week I’ll return with comments on the important world.
Availability Button - In my out of office autoresponder I wrote I was too busy hugging trees to respond to incoming messages. It was a lie. However, I still think we should be able to switch on/off our availability much more frequently. If I received an email saying “I am too busy hugging my family” when I wrote someone an email after 8PM I’d clap my hands.
Publish Now - It felt like a dream to receive my newsletter Monday at noon while sitting in a park eating an ice cream. Then later I started to think about how rude it is that we can talk to other people without the intention of responding. Imagine Twitter without any prescheduled tweets, just one stream of real time public conversation with people who were present.
Dumb Phone - The app I used most last week was Google Maps. By the end of the trip I had to draw a map of our trip in my notebook because I actually had no idea of where we had been while I always looked for the next turn. That is a side-story, I was mainly just wondering why I had to stress about my map running out of battery instead of carrying a good old road map.
Personal Memory - Browsing through my notebook from the trip makes me happy. I didn’t finish all of the pages in the notebook, so I still haven’t added it to the stack of the other notebooks from this year. But the thought of having my thoughts collected in a stack of paper in a drawer is smoothing. I can open the drawer whenever I want. I don’t need to stress about whether the venture capital fuelled startup will go bankrupt, be acquired or change layout. Going forward I want to be much better favoriting and sharing posts, not on digital platforms, but in my own notebooks so I have them in one spot.
Wind and Trees - We had a storm. The trees were swaying like crazy, from side to side. When I looked onto the other hilltop the trees looked to stand still. I want to look more on everything as when I look at those trees on the other side of the valley.
Relationships - I am always surprised about how little we know about the people we spend the most time with. Take the time to listen to someone tell their life story and you’ll understand them - and yourself - much better. And don’t stay away from asking the uncomfortable questions, they are rarely new to the person telling their stories.
Delete News - When you stop reading the news your realize how few news are actually relevant. When you stop reading the news you stop creating the news?
Poor Imagination - Whenever I return from spending time in nature I wonder why I spend so much time inside a box, in a bigger box, in a big city. So far my only conclusion is that I have a poor imagination for what is possible.
Naive Weekly
Hi, I’m Kristoffer and I’m one of the founders of co-matter. You just read Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.
As always a big thanks to the seven Naive Friends who chip in every month or year to support me making time to write this newsletter: Nikolaj, Antal, Søren, Dries, Mikkel, Tina & Angela!
<3
Kristoffer