Then this morning I logged into my Google Reader and discovered that they had added this great tool in my side bar - two actually. One was Recommendations - Google suggests blogs that have similar content to what you already read (it was not surprizing to find that some of the suggested blogs were blogs that I were already on my list to check out because their authors regularly cross-posted in the blogs that I read.) The other was "Most Popular" which is not a list of the most popular blogs but a list of the most popular posts which keeps updating so that there is no end. It was only after I had spent the entirety of my break time and looked to see where the end was that I realized that there was no end. It just kept updating. The more posts you read, the more it updated.
Which really worries me. If there is that much dreck out there (and there really is, I purposely skipped quite a bit of it because the titles warned me that the content might not be work-friendly) has the giant 'group conversation' just become a bunch of people talking to themselves? A lot of "sound and fury signifying nothing" (can't remember the author). Has meaningful conversation just left the building?
This is especially worrying because according to another article I read, lawyers are the chattiest bunch of all. (I have a reading problem, if you haven't been able to determine that from this current post. Unfortunately there are no 12 step groups for reading. In fact, if you are a non-reader you are put on programs to help you become a reader if you are in elementary school. I'm not going to look at this too closely for too long. Part of the reason I went to law school so was that I could be PAID to READ and WRITE ALL DAY! As my husband has observed - there is obviously something very sick and wrong with me.) Anyway, we go on even when we know we are over-talking. And yet we do it anyway. The best evidence of this is my LAW assignment that will not die. I have a page length limit. I have been over that limit for days. Every night I have a date with "the red pen of doom." Yesterday I cut two pages out of the draft and put one back in. Yikes! I still have 1.5 pages I need to cut, which means that I will need to cut at least 3 before I will get it right because I know that I will be putting at least 1 back and possibly 2. With that math, I'm doomed to turn this assignment in at least 1/2 page over the limit (which will not be good for my grade, and that will not be good for my morale.)
Anyway, this glut of information is like standing in a giant open-air square listening to everyone talk on their cell phones. Some of it is meaningful. Some of it is clearly important because people are saying "wait while I add that" and then stop talking long enough to add whatever it is to their iPhones or Blackberries, but most of it is just noise. I've quit talking on my cell phone and gone to texting because that way I'm not contributing to the cloud of noise that seems to be everywhere.
However, the good thing about all this noise, dreck, and endless stream of information was the really cool comparison I was able to draw between the problem I needed to write about and a completely unrelated non-law activity that happened to provide just the illustration I needed, and allowed me to cut almost two pages out of my LAW assignment. So I have now been on the lookout for another brilliant non-law example that I can use to cut another two pages out of my assignment and hopefully get it completed. Which is why I have spent a large amount of time reading frivolous dreck in Google Reader over the past several days. You never know where another great idea might come from.
So if anyone is interested, I am doing my own part to contribute to the overload and return the favor by posting this to my blog. If you are looking for me, you can find me at the SBA table at the FLYSX review weekend with a copy of my LAW assignment and my red pen.
jm
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