Wasting Time
Monday, January 07, 2008 Filed in: Ideas
Does your personal computer make you productive and
efficient? Or, has it also helped you find new ways
to waste time?
Is web browsing productive? Is email a more efficient form of communication? How about all that time tinkering around your PC, running virus and spyware scans? Wasted? Or, productive?
Toys that used to engage us in wasting time have found their way to the internet and your web browser.
Remember Spirograph? It's alive and well and with more capability than ever. What does it do? Exactly what the original spirographs did. It draws, uh, well, um spirographs, but it does it on your computer.
Computer controls let you change the circle's radius, change the colors, even add sound effects. Listen carefully right now. Listen. Here it? That's the sound of time being wasted.
Maybe you won't feel that your time online is wasted if you can actually do something. How about controlling the chicken in Subservient Chicken. Yes, Virginia, there is a giant chicken in the living room. Enter a command and the chicken does (mostly) what you tell it.
Sit down. Stand up. Jump. Turn around. Fly. I told the chicken to do something nasty and it wagged a 'naughty, naughty' finger at me. In the end, I commanded Subservient Chicken to sleep and it did. But only for about 10 seconds.
Add 10 seconds to something else I found that wastes time.
Is web browsing productive? Is email a more efficient form of communication? How about all that time tinkering around your PC, running virus and spyware scans? Wasted? Or, productive?
Toys that used to engage us in wasting time have found their way to the internet and your web browser.
Remember Spirograph? It's alive and well and with more capability than ever. What does it do? Exactly what the original spirographs did. It draws, uh, well, um spirographs, but it does it on your computer.
Computer controls let you change the circle's radius, change the colors, even add sound effects. Listen carefully right now. Listen. Here it? That's the sound of time being wasted.
Maybe you won't feel that your time online is wasted if you can actually do something. How about controlling the chicken in Subservient Chicken. Yes, Virginia, there is a giant chicken in the living room. Enter a command and the chicken does (mostly) what you tell it.
Sit down. Stand up. Jump. Turn around. Fly. I told the chicken to do something nasty and it wagged a 'naughty, naughty' finger at me. In the end, I commanded Subservient Chicken to sleep and it did. But only for about 10 seconds.
Add 10 seconds to something else I found that wastes time.
