From "Today's Reading," by Benjamin Kunkel, a reminder (to self) about putting pixels in their place.
"....So it is not culture that never ends on the internet; it is the internet itself that never ends. And yet the same might be said about any object of compulsion. Consider Siegel's examples of pre-internet pastimes. There were always people who when they went to a corner bar for a drink ended up having ten. So did some people, as plenty still do, have sex—or sex of a kind—compulsively. There are (or were) even compulsive letter-writers and walkers. "No one ever just sends an email" is reminiscent of the old slogan, sinister and accurate, of Pringles potato chips: No one can eat just one. You could write just the single email. You could discover the single piece of information you wanted online and then log off. You could make sure that that your blog-reading and clip-watching didn't encroach on the hours set aside for Tarkovksy and Proust, or that your social networking didn't get in the way of your face-to-face socializing. No one is stopping you from stopping yourself. It's just that many users of digital communications technology can't stop. An inability to log off is hardly the most destructive habit you could acquire, but it seems unlikely there is any more widespread compulsion among the professional middle-class and their children than lingering online."
So give up all blogs...except this one!
