Can No News be Good News?

Every time I think our attention can't get more distracted, I'm proven wrong.

With the insane rate of development in the realm of technology, it seems that new channels are being dreamed up and developed on a daily basis. After first having only telegrams to communicate with, society moved towards actual mail, then email, then instant messages, then text messages, and so on. This system has brought society tons of new discoveries and has opened up the global stage to anyone with a computer and an opinion to diffuse themselves to a massive audience in seconds. The internet has given us all a voice though it seems that the volume control has been broken for a while.

I was thinking about things while at a Wild Sweet Orange concert in Portland over Thanksgiving. I'd listened to the Georgia rock band on the way to the show at the Crystal Ballroom and was fairly excited to hear how their live sound measured up to their CD. However, the guy working the sound booth must have spent years at the mixing board and over time slowly waged battle on his auditory system. I remember the volume being so loud that when any of the musicians would hit a certain frequency (from a particular note or chord), my (already aching) eardrums would reverberate a certain way that would leave me cramming my fingers in my ears, doubling over in pain, and clearly distracting me from the show at hand. This is no way to enjoy a live performance

I feel like the culture of News is developing in a similar same way. Upon opening my RSS feeder alone, there are 126 new feeds to read/catch up on. This would lock me at my desk for hours and without even opening my Facebook or Email. With Twitter (that I dont use, thankfully) and other channels providing up-to-the-second news and opinions, I find myself sticking my fingers in my ears, wincing, and shutting out the news like at the Ballroom. Like TV Advertising, I've been bombarded by so many subversive "Status Updates" and "Away Messages" that I feel online interactions are getting more and more ineffective.

I propose a new kind of "Slow News" network. I think it'd be interesting to have some kind of online publication that publishes 3-5 longer stories per week that are relevant to your life, targeted community, or declared interests. In a depth vs. width paradigm, you can't truly learn a lot about what's going on in the world or even in your own community when you base your opinions off of a CNN Twitter update or a 2-paragraph blurb. How did the culture of self-proclaimed experts get to evolve, with only Wikipedia and a few short headlines to back up their claims of enlightenment?

I can imagine spending the quality of time and attention on a few stories per week like I do when I read books: focused, attentive, and reflective. My friend Gary Smith does this when he writes stories for Sports Illustrated. By writing only a few long-format, super deep and insightful articles per year, he's distinguished himself as the most decorated sports writer in America, while cultivating a community of die hard readers.

In the future, one of the new, true American freedoms might lie in what we choose to pay our undivided attention to and what we choose to mentally process. If not, I fear that we'll keep becoming more and more scattered and ADD with less and less to base credible thoughts and opinions on.

How's that sound?