Media Technology Deprivation for One Week

Project description
Eliminate media technology from your life for one week. For seven consecutive days you are to do without radio, tv, newspapers, magazines,and the Internet (other than as required by work or school). Other reading is fine. Try not to ask others what is going on in the world. Write a short paper–about 3-4 pages–in which you describe how you experienced that week. Please copy and paste your essay into a Journal entry. (See “Journal” on the toolbar above.” Be sure to click on “Share Entry with Instructor” in the bottom left corner. See “Our Schedule” under Course Home for the due date.

Your essay should address each of the following:

What your normal media routine is (a very brief description of a typical day)
What you did and did not miss
What you did with the extra time
What the experience taught you
How your interactions with others were affected
How your moods were affected
Remember, the state you will be putting yourself in was the state everyone was in all the time not that long ago.

Many of us rarely go more than a few minutes without the radio or tv on, at least as background. Reflection is increasingly a lost art, a lost pleasure. One consequence of the loss of reflection is self-alienation. Even though we might spend a great deal of time alone–commuting in the car, watching television in the evening–very little of this time is spent in quiet reflection of one’s own thoughts, in knowing oneself.

When given this assignment, many students report having very uncomfortable moments. Many of us get into our cars and the first thing we do after starting the engine is turn on the radio. The act is habitual, and very likely you will find yourself doing this during the assignment. Then you will turn off the radio (hopefully), but very likely there will be several times when you impulsively reach to turn it on again. The silence–being alone with your own thoughts–can be both uncomfortable (Why? is a good question)and newly pleasurable. Should you encounter such nervous moments, I encourage you to persevere and not yield to the temptation to turn on the radio again.

Similarly, many of us walk into the house or apartment and turn on the radio or television before we even sit down. Why?

Think of the times when the power has gone off in your house. With no electricity, the house becomes eerily silent. At these moments we realize how much noise we constantly live with: the hum of the refrigerator, the rattle of the furnace, the low whine of the computer, and so on. For many people this silence is punishing. Years ago I had a roommate and, when the power went out once, she soon became so agitated by the silence that she drove to the store to buy batteries for her radio.

What has happened to us? One hundred years ago virtually every moment of one’s life was lived in this silence. Have we become so different?

Many of us hear the lullaby of the television or radio at bedtime, and are awakened in the morning by music or the voice of the radio personality. Missing are those moments of reflection before we sleep, when we revisit the day’s events and gain a richer understanding of our lives. Lost,too, are those moments upon awakening when we reconstitute our self-consciousness, seeing changes in how we apprehend the world, how we feel about being alive, married, mortal, and so on. Instead our minds are thrown into the stream of our day by the sounds from the radio. We dress with the radio or the “Today Show” as backround noise, walk the short distance to our car in relative silence only to turn on the radio again in the car. More and more at workplaces the radio or tv is found. There is seldom an escape.

Consider this week a gift, the gift of permissible ignorance. More and more we are assaulted with information. Each day we hear of or see accounts of natural distasters, wars, plane crashes, murders, terrorist attacks, children dying of starvation, and on and on. Having a daily awareness of these events–the great bulk of which we are powerless to change–leaves us feeling weakened and saddened. Additionally, we are inundated with raw information about the world. The Soviet Union breaks up into how many countries? Can you name them? The United States is having some trade dispute with China. What’s it about? The Supreme Court handed down ten decisions last week. What were they about? Most of us either feel like failures for knowing so little of what is going on, or we simply resign from being informed citizens. Can you name your US Congressional Representative from your district? Your two US Senators? It’s been my experience that very few students can. Yet we are made to feel stupid by the flood of information which no human being could possibly manage to assimilate. Which is more important, to know the name of the Canadian leader or the name of your child’s third-grade teacher? For Americans, at least, the answer is obvious: the person who spends more time than you do instructing your child about the world. Too often, though, this crucial information gets lost among the clutter.

Think of this week as your opportunity to escape. Leave behind the burden of knowing. Virtually the entirety of human history has been lived in near complete ignorance of what was happening beyond the edge of one’s town. Enjoy that ignorance.