At the beginning of the
year I said that I would prioritise book reading over Social Media because I feel that the disconnect between reader and audience has grown to such an extent that you benefit more from reading books than Facebook and Twitter Timelines.
Reading So far this year:
Abandon : A book about a mining town whose inhabitants disappeared from one day to the next.
Snowbound: About a father and daughter who end up travelling a big distance
Dark Matter: A book about all the alternative infinite number of realities we could experience as a result of every decision we make
Gray Mountain: A book about the American coal mining industry and its disregard for human rights
La bataille de Normandie, 6 juin-25 août 1944: 80 jours en enfer It is easy to think of D-Day as a
one day event but through the reading of this book we see how Northern France suffered and yet rejoiced at the liberation by French, Canadian, American, British, Polish and other armies. It looks at the personalities, locations and tactics used over a period of months.
Long periods of focused attention
By replacing Social media with book reading I feel that I am going back to a habit that many of us lost with the emergence of social media. We went from reading chapters a day to reading tweets and Facebook entries. We went from the long form to the short form.
The short form of Tweets and Facebook posts was rewarding when it was about conversations and keeping up with friends. As the focus on friends has dwindled and as the quality of content has decreased so the pull factor of long-form content such as books came back.
Reading devices
I have a kindle Paperwhite and a Kobo Aura H20. I prefer reading on e-readers, especially when I spend several hours a day on rainy weekends reading. The batteries last for a long time and there are no distractions. Mobile phone screens slow down my reading speed and tablets don’t feel as comfortable for reading.
I use my mobile phone and an ipod classic when I read audiobooks.
Half the amount of tweets from a few months ago and far less than was my habit until now. This should be the normal twitter amount from now on. Don’t have as much free time for the social media anymore.
Tonight I went to the cinema and saw two films at a cinema that has turned half a century old. The most interesting of those event is a 1930s film with a live performance by a jazz band touring switzerland with that film. I also saw an Avant premiere for a film that was quite interesting. It was a different subject matter than other films I’ve seen.
I’ll write more and include links to videos once some of the video material I shot is processed.
Once again I have deleted my twitter account. Here are ten reasons to give up on twitter.
Europe is neutral about the site. If you want friendships with people an ocean away join.
Whenever you want to post some technical problem means you have to post five times
If you have a real job, not freelancing, then you can’t afford to check updates all the time.
Lack of user engagement, when less than a tenth of your replies are responded to you know there’s no point staying up to date with those people.
Virtual community, unlike with facebook and other social networks the people you interact with here are strangers.
Spam, as more and more marketers come to the site so the more you use certain words the more unsolicited messages you get.
Veteran community: Aside from Facebook all websites are at their community most interesting when the users are new and passionate about the service. That has faded with twitter.
140 characters; Although it was great three years ago mobile phones are now far more capable mobile devices. Limiting yourself to 140 characters is no longer an interesting option.
Server downtime. For three years they have been struggling with making the platform stable and for three years they have been failing. If you have to try five times to post 140 characters then something is wrong.
User indifference. They are indifferent about their user base. Just take a look at the FAQ and try to offer them feedback and you will first have to go through an FAQ before being able to explain your views.
Having a full time job means that my free time is more precious than before. As a result I’d rather be out in the real world doing real things. It’s also about how much time you need to invest into such a service before getting anything of any value out of it. As a result a year after I first left twitter I have left again. This time I think it will be for good. I don’t like the way the company is run and I don’t like the way the users are using the site. Goodbye twitter. On to better things.
Mewe is like all other social networks were in their early days. In the early days it’s all about building a community, it’s all about privacy and it’s all about putting the user above commercial interests. Several years down the line they often shift towards trying to survive and even thrive if possible.
As I saw that Tim Berners Lee seems to support Mewe I decided to try the social network. It looks like every other social network and it seems to have a reasonable number of users. I skimmed through the groups and I noticed that “alternative” groups are more popular for now. I hope that this shifts towards being a community of people who prefer evidence based information.
I am confused that a website about privacy encourages people to upload their contacts. This goes against the ethos of the site. Why would you need my contacts when you’re meant to be an organic community? Shouldn’t adoption result from sharing your profile rather than the other way around?
Why the shift?
For me the web is a social place where people share projects and ideas. It is a place where quality conversations take place and where we establish new friendships. Facebook no longer covers that niche. It has over 2 billion users of which over one billion are monthly users. It has become too big to fail.
Facebook does not assume the responsibilities that a network of its size and stature should assume. It controls what we see and in 2014 it played with our emotions. They never suffered the consequences of this.
A shift back to blogs
Mewe is an interesting idea but I would really like to see a shift back towards self hosted content and ideas sharing. I would like to see wordpress, wix and other projects gain traction. Diaspora and identi.ca tried to distribute online communities so that there was no single point of failure. They failed to reach critical mass. Wordpress, both self hosted, and shared hosting could fill that niche. The more active we are and the more content we have the more traffic we get, and the more traffic we get the more sustainable our participation could be.
Hiking, climbing, cycling
If you write about hiking, climbing or cycling I would be happy for you to write guest posts on this blog. I’d like to keep sharing adventures but cut out websites like Facebook. We deserve an organic, chronological sharing of adventures and pictures.
I had a morning walk this morning because I found that there are too many people to avoid during my afternoon walks. During my morning walk I took images of flowering plants, bees collecting pollen from flowers, roses budding and Apple orchards getting ready to blossom.
During the walk I also listened to two Echo Der Zeit episodes in a row. I like to listen during my walks because I’m taking the opportunity to get used to hearing German, and as I become more fluent, so I can understand a bigger proportion of the podcast.
In Switzerland the discussion about whether to close tourism sites continues although for me the answer is simple. During a pandemic you should entertain yourself as close to home as possible. Every one of my walks starts at home and reaches as far as I can walk in an hour. The trip back might bring it to two hours but I’m within a radius of five kilometres of my home and i am staying local.
The motorway is almost empty. At the same time of day in normal conditions both lanes would be filled and you would struggle to see decent gaps between cars. Now the gaps are large and it would be a pleasure to drive.
Normally this road is filled with traffic on a Sunday as people head to and from Nyon and it’s surroundings. Today we see large gaps in traffic as so few people are getting into their cars for activities. Traffic, at least on weekends has declined.
I followed the link because i was afraid that there was a new pandemic rule forbidding us from using vehicles on Sunday. Luckily it’s from a century ago.
Now that we’re entering week four of the pandemic it’s appropriate to mention this open letter. In the last three days I’ve seen two different neighbours have guests over three times. Tomorrow will be the fourth week from self-isolation where we have not been able to socialise in person and it does have a cost. We can’t shake hands, we can’t have a conversation from a normal speaking distance.
“Study after study demonstrates that even if there is only a little bit of connection between groups (i.e. social dinners, playdates/playgrounds, etc.), the epidemic trajectory isn’t much different than if there was no measure in place.”
Open Letter from Jonothan Smith, Epidemologist, yale University.
Apathetic and selfish people, who continue to socialise, and continue to see different people are making it so that those of us taking the pandemic will need to sacrifice for longer before the end of the pandemic. It does feel interminable. We chose to start self-isolating as individuals six weeks ago and now we’re in week four of forced self-isolation, and because people are not respecting the rules, it feels as if there is no end in sight for this pandemic.
In England those who like to spend time outdoors for walks, for runs and for bike rides are afraid that the selfishness of some will result in the removing of their last freedom. Enforced solitude and the ensuing loneliness is detrimental to people’s well being. Having the freedom to go for a walk, a bike ride or a run is beneficial because for half an hour to two hours we can spend time with our thoughts, but also distracted by the landscape in which we find ourselves.
The worst thing about losing the freedom to go for walks, runs or bike rides is that we lose the safety valve that enables us to cope with isolation. It also takes away our access to sunshine and daylight. If we’re stuck indoors without our daily walks we will see a deterioration in health. That in turn will lead to more preventable deaths.
See if you can spot the bee.
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