What's the best way to procrastinate during finals?
Goofing off is no longer wasting time
Jon Christian
Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: Issues
Wasting time is so much more productive in the information age. There, I said it: YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook have no impact on the amount of time that I waste, and in fact the calibre of most of my online haunts by far surpasses that of their off-line equivalents. Online news, capricious research, and general frolicking are so much more interesting and informative with a world of information at your finger tips. In fact, I have no doubt that without such looming temptresses of the world wide web, I would be wasting just as much time on far less meaningful pursuits – watching reruns of the original Battlestar Galactica, perhaps, or reading Ayn Rand.
Indeed, Wikipedia is not only perhaps the most prominent example of a copyleft resource compounding the useful knowledge of many into a coherent whole, but its lively, enthusiastic community fosters a friendly end-user experience that, by nature of its “In the news,” “featured Article,” and “Did you know?”features, changes constantly to embrace new users and to open new channels of research for the hardened Wikipedian. The hyperlinked structure of the Internet in general so naturally facilitates tangential perusal that the idea of sitting down with a standard reference material for fun now seems quite unnatural. And even if it’s not reliable enough for formal research, not even the crustiest academic could deny its usefulness as a compendium of relevant citations. Granted, I spent nearly all of last Sunday night reading about hypothetical megastructures and models of extraterrestrial contact – but with nothing serious to focus on, what else would I have done at such an hour? Certainly not catch up on my sleep schedule.
Since I’ve gotten out of the habit of tuning into public radio, the web also serves as my primary source for the news. The BBC headlines are built into my browser, so any time that I have a spare moment I leaf through them for interesting updates or quirky anecdotes. Did you know that in Venezuela, Easter feasts are traditionally centered around the capybara, a gargantuan rodent related to the guinea pig? I certainly wouldn’t unless I had just checked the headlines! For a more thorough analysis of current events, Google News has surpassed the capabilities of any physical news stand with anything from a broad overview of breaking or sub-indexes to specific queries about more interesting and specific events. Venturing into the blogosphere, amateur pundits are often even more adept than the professionals at integrating different online technologies with embedded YouTube videos or frequently updated Twitter accounts.
The Internet isn’t useful only for esoteric or course-specific research. Whether I’m legitimately bored or I have vast amounts of looming course work, my Internet routine keeps me up to date on news and gives me a boundless resource for tangential research or unusual reading. If I’m near a computer, I seldom talk to anybody without Googling anything interesting that comes up, and even if I’m doing homework it doesn’t take long to Wikipedia something that seems fishy to see if I can get a different perspective. Now, the instructional uses of Facebook or Hulu might be a little harder to rationalize – but really, if you didn’t have those, are you sure you’d be doing anything more productive?
Indeed, Wikipedia is not only perhaps the most prominent example of a copyleft resource compounding the useful knowledge of many into a coherent whole, but its lively, enthusiastic community fosters a friendly end-user experience that, by nature of its “In the news,” “featured Article,” and “Did you know?”features, changes constantly to embrace new users and to open new channels of research for the hardened Wikipedian. The hyperlinked structure of the Internet in general so naturally facilitates tangential perusal that the idea of sitting down with a standard reference material for fun now seems quite unnatural. And even if it’s not reliable enough for formal research, not even the crustiest academic could deny its usefulness as a compendium of relevant citations. Granted, I spent nearly all of last Sunday night reading about hypothetical megastructures and models of extraterrestrial contact – but with nothing serious to focus on, what else would I have done at such an hour? Certainly not catch up on my sleep schedule.
Since I’ve gotten out of the habit of tuning into public radio, the web also serves as my primary source for the news. The BBC headlines are built into my browser, so any time that I have a spare moment I leaf through them for interesting updates or quirky anecdotes. Did you know that in Venezuela, Easter feasts are traditionally centered around the capybara, a gargantuan rodent related to the guinea pig? I certainly wouldn’t unless I had just checked the headlines! For a more thorough analysis of current events, Google News has surpassed the capabilities of any physical news stand with anything from a broad overview of breaking or sub-indexes to specific queries about more interesting and specific events. Venturing into the blogosphere, amateur pundits are often even more adept than the professionals at integrating different online technologies with embedded YouTube videos or frequently updated Twitter accounts.
The Internet isn’t useful only for esoteric or course-specific research. Whether I’m legitimately bored or I have vast amounts of looming course work, my Internet routine keeps me up to date on news and gives me a boundless resource for tangential research or unusual reading. If I’m near a computer, I seldom talk to anybody without Googling anything interesting that comes up, and even if I’m doing homework it doesn’t take long to Wikipedia something that seems fishy to see if I can get a different perspective. Now, the instructional uses of Facebook or Hulu might be a little harder to rationalize – but really, if you didn’t have those, are you sure you’d be doing anything more productive?
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