The Internet Abhors Boredom


As a kid, one got bored very easily. Especially during summer vacation in Delhi, when it was boiling hot outside which meant going out to play was not an option for much of the day. There was only Doordarshan on TV, and even that started at 6 and had horribly uninteresting programs, except for the cartoons on Sunday! The playing outside part aside, I guess life must have been pretty much the same for adults as well back then.

Fast forward to today and you have 24x7 TV channels: even if none of them has anything worth watching, you can keep surfing endlessly through the channels. There’s also the Internet which offers even more variety than TV. And smartphones have brought the endless stuff of the Internet to your fingertips even when you are stuck in traffic. And that pretty much means the end of boredom. Which should be a good thing: after all, who wants to be bored, right?

I sure thought so, which is why I found Clay Shirky’s comment interesting:
“It was only later that I realized the value of being bored was actually pretty high. Being bored is a kind of diagnostic for the gap between what you might be interested in and your current environment. But now it is an act of significant discipline to say, “I’m going to stare out the window. I’m going to schedule some time to stare out the window.”

Adding to Shirky, Nick Carr wrote:
“We don't like being bored because boredom is the absence of engaging stimulus, but boredom is valuable because it requires us to fill that absence out of our own resources, which is process of discovery, of doors opening. The pain of boredom is a spur to action, but because it's pain we're happy to avoid it. Gadgetry means never having to feel that pain, or that spur. The web expands to fill all boredom. That's dangerous for everyone, but particularly so for kids, who, without boredom's spur, may never discover what in themselves or in their surroundings is most deeply engaging to them. Perpetual boredom is an unattractive state. So is perpetual nonboredom.”

Huh, I never thought of boredom that way! But what Shirky and Carr say is true, isn’t it?

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