Day of Silence? No, no. Day of Retention and Reflection. - Fix'd-

To go a whole day without interactions with electronic media: this was my assignment for a 24 hour period. When I first heard it, I was laughed a bit to myself. Thoughts such as “Is this supposed to be hard?” or “Could I do two days just for fun?” crossed through my mind. I even remember hearing some of the people in class raising objections to the assignment, trying to find loopholes, saying it would be impractical or impossible to accomplish. Wonderment of how dependent on electronic media we are as a culture appeared to me. Am I less dependent than others? Have I somehow escaped this hold? Regardless, the pleas of my classmates only served to bemuse me before I set upon the task set for me.

The essay I had to read which led into this assignment was interesting. All of the students seemed to get a lot out of the assignment. It also reflected rather well our attachment to technology, though I think it overstated our dependence on the electronic media. I do not think we have this constant craving to be doing something or on the go like the essay portrays. I know I have spent countless times just staring off into space, the sky, or something else, lost in and transfixed on my thoughts. May haps I am an exception to the rule. Who knows, regardless, The task I embarked upon was only a little harder than I thought it would be because of some elements beyond my control.

I came up with a plan for my day of deprivation. I made plans with my girlfriend to come over at some point after she woke up and bring some board games, which we would then play for most of the day. She ended up bringing Monopoly, but one game of that lasts so long that it turned out fine. At some point we would go out for a walk and enjoy the nice outdoors. In hindsight, this was a simple plan that did not take some minute problems into account, which I will highlight later.

I started my media deprivation at about 1:30 in the morning, when I went to sleep. I turned off my cell phone and threw it in a corner. It was no longer necessary. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I woke up in the morning to my girlfriend’s greetings and the treasure of monopoly. This was basically our day: Play monopoly, eat food, and go walk around the area a bit, since the neighborhood actually does offer a nice walk. We discovered something in this day: Board games are fun! They offer an alternate social activity with more social interactivity than television/film and video games. They get forgotten and cast aside so easily, but they really are great. A slight hiccup occurred when it came time to eat and I had no food in my house for luncheons.

We went to Quizno’s to pick up some sandwiches for lunch. As I got to the door, a realization dawned on me. I could not go into the place. They play music there. I could not listen to music. I mentally went through a list of all of the places I could think of that serve food and they all played music. I had never even thought about it before! Music is everywhere. I ended up sending my girlfriend inside to get the food for me because we were hungry and I really did not have much in the way of food. I had not considered this obstacle before. This made it so that I could not really go many places because a great many places play music, even just barely audible in the background.

The rest of the day went fine though. I made it through the whole 24 hour period without interacting with electronic media. The hard part was not in resisting the interaction itself; that was easy. The hard part was avoiding it from other people, such as the music in the background. However, I did get these urges every so often to want to show something on the internet or my computer to my girlfriend or play a game with her, with the immediate dismissal of it in my mind because I could not. The thing is that these would not have even really added to the enjoyment of the day too much. They would have been an immediate and quick moments of enjoyment that would likely quickly fade.

I actually learned a lot from this assignment. I went into it thinking it would just be like any other day minus some electronic media, not really learning much other than something trite like a day can still be enjoyed with other means of entertainment, but I ended up taking a bit more away from this assignment. I discovered just how dependent we have, as a society, become on our electronic media. I constantly check my friend list on Instant Messenger to see if anyone I want to talk to has signed on or to see if I have gotten any new messages. I constantly crave to interact with some form of electronic entertainment through movies, games, and the internet in general. Going a day without all of this kind of opened my eyes to it all. I could place the cravings; I could see them and force myself to resist them. If I had planned to do homework at the time, I probably could have gotten quite a bit done.

I definitely felt the need to be connected during my deprivation. I admittedly did have the urge from time to time to call someone and see how their turkey day was the previous day. This need to feel connected I think might have something to do with how we have structured our social interactions with people. Most of our conversations with people, at least in the beginning, are concerned with how they are doing, what they are currently doing in their lives, etc. These are things we get off of the internet from Facebook and the like.

I think we want to constantly be connected partially because people constantly throw out references from the internet, television shows, movies, etc. We want to get these references. They sort of help us fit in. Those who do not understand tend to be more outcast. Friendships can be made based on references; people can be made fun of for not understanding them. By being connected and catching these references, one can avoid the insults and catch the good stuff such as friendships, furthering social interactions, and anything else I could not think of by knowing and putting out or catching these references.

Citation

1) Walker, Danna. “The Longest Day” Washington Post Magazine. 5 Aug. 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080101720.html