Time spent in front of the screen

Yep, do pretty much the same... work in front of the computer all day, come home for dinner and a play with the kids before their bedtime and then I sit down with the laptop while watching telly with the other half...

Still read a lot of books though, the laptop screen keeps the other half awake otherwise!

About 2/3 hours in work and maybe an hour in the evening. More than enough

Half the bloody world is stuck in front of some screen. Either TV or internet. We are saturated with information

Reading a book on this at the moment called The Shallows. It's a bit of an eye opener for me because like a lot of people here I used to read a lot and have hobbies, but often find myself pissing hours away on Reddit and stabbing the refresh button on Boards and other forums.

Deleted User wrote: »

Ok thanks. I was actually thinking was some linguistic pun he was making that I was missing and I was reading the sentence every which way to try to find it I had every image in my head possible including weird combinations of wolves and escalators trying to work out what it might have been

Ah, well, it was a specific reference to this meme: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-escalated-quickly

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes I imported a wolf from the US some years ago and have enjoyed the challange of keeping him ever since.

Certainly sounds interesting!

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Just one? There is another thing in there that tends to jump out at a lot of people if and when he mentions it. Though in this case it was quite missable.

Pfft, everyone's had one of them, imagining two isn't a stretch. But I've never owned any wolves!

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah that does explain it, thanks again The lack of a television does mean I tend to miss popular culture references when they come up and I have in the past manged to make myself look as useless as when UK politicians try to make Coronation Street references in their speeches to make themselves look "with it".



Indeed. It keeps me away from the computer screen at home anyway, which was the point of my mentioning it. Actually the hour running in the morning and the hour cycling in the evening is directly linked as I do both with him in order to keep him well excercised. Wolves tend to eat through things important to you if they get restless. Little things like your walls which you tend to prefer to keep intact and once thought were pretty sturdy can quite quickly be rendered silly by a restless mutt.

Got any pics?? How big is he?

Deleted User wrote: »

Though I guess I have mentioned enough personal details on the forum for someone to find me if they put in the effort and will likely continue to do so - I still do not want to make it any easier for them

I must admit, a work colleague was telling us that her mother was telling her some guy from the town she grew up in was now living in a truple (not in a judgemental fashion I must say, more pass-remarkable) and I did wonder if it was you...

Keep in mind that if the Apples and Samsungs have their way there'll be no such thing as time spent not in front of the screen in a few years.:p

I think that what people are missing is the fact that a computer is essentially a multipurpose tool, not a single-use object like most, and in time its usefulness has grown up to a point where it can easily replace many of these mentioned "single-purpose" objects.

You can watch TV, a movie, read a book or the newspaper on a computer, but you can't, say, watch TV on a newspaper.

On top of that, computers can be used to perform a wide variety of other tasks that involve both creating stuff or just consuming:

- work;
- play games;
- write;
- create art;
- self-teaching a host of subjects (from history to programming);

Therefore, the perception of "always being in front of a screen" is somewhat distorted; What are you actually doing in front of the screen?

Personally, I do a lot of things both with a computer and without. At work, I am on the technical side of QA. At home, I research information, watch documentaries, create art (not very good at it, but I still enjoy it!), keep my programming skills up to date, develop a few simple games (haven't managed to make the next Angry Birds yet!) and play games; "Off the screen" activities include reading (I can get totally immersed in a good book), some DYI both in the apartment and on the car, go to the gym and build scale models.

However, should I say that most of the "off the computer" activities, I got into after reading and watching tutorials about them from the Internet - the gym being the obvious exception.

Therefore, I would say that computers are an excellent tools and an essential one at that - being 32 I did live quite a long time without the Internet, but right now it seems inconceivable to me, as the habit of being able to access information about just anything at the click of a button is quite spoiling.

As for the short attention span problem, I don't think it is strictly connected to computers and the Internet - I clearly remember when I was a child, if a game required a little bit of setting up or had a learning curve, most of the other kids would just lose interest within 30 seconds and decide to be messy and noisy instead. And I am talking the likes of 1988, no Internet nor iPads to blame for it - just the TV, perhaps...