Going Green

So I joined Twitter.

I don't really like new technology. I don't like investing time in learning something that is only going to ultimately take more time than I want to give anyway.

But Twitter surprised me. Did you know that the Internet is full of interesting, useful, well-written articles about everything? I've read about what kinds of food professional cyclists eat, how people are responding to the government shutdown, a theological understanding of power, what it feels like to always be the worst athlete at the gym, mowing crews in Detroit, a guy who is 5'5" and can dunk, and so forth.

In the past week, I have read an incredible number of words. Every day, I think the next day things might slow down a little...because how much high quality content can really be added to the internet everyday?

The answer is: A LOT. Every day, I have new tweets in my feed, new links to articles and videos that I find myself compelled to follow.

I have written previously about my thoughts on sustainable eating (here). But until I joined Twitter, I was unaware of the massive consumption of information happening in our world. I would like to suggest some ideas for "going green" on the Internet:

1. Reduce. At a recent trip to the Kansas City Museum of Art, I wandered through the contemporary art exhibits and was surprised to see a television. The accompanying sign informed me that in the early days of television, there were only three channels. Something like 55% of households owned a television, and they all watched the same three channels. Shows like Gilligan's Island and The Ed Sullivan Show were a shared experience. Now, news and entertainment are so specialized, no two people have the same experience. There are of course many advantages in this (respecting the variety of values held by people, giving voice to marginalized sources, presenting multiple perspectives on an issue), but I think we've gone overboard. How about we divide things up? Maybe we can all get our news from the BBC on Monday, CNN on Tuesday, MSNBC on Wednesday, Fox on Thursday, and The New Yorker on Friday. Saturdays will be devoted to recreation--I like the Outsider magazine. And Christianity Today can have Sundays.

2. Reuse. Instead of constantly updating content, how about reposting the highest quality articles, stories, poems, and even books from the past from time to time? It is sad for me to see so many good articles that are here today and gone tomorrow. A really good article might last a few days as it gets shared and re-shared on Facebook. But we seldom give it enough time to change our lives.

3. Conserve. Read an article and then think about it. Talk to someone else about it. Retweet it. Act on it. Don't just read it and then toss it aside like litter. Get some mileage out of it. Recently our dishwasher broke, and the dishwasher repairman who pronounced it dead told us that the average life of a dishwasher is between 18 months and 3 years. I don't know the average life of online content, but I imagine that it is at most a matter of weeks. Try to stretch out the life of the really good articles and ideas, rather than tossing them aside.

This post is meant to be a little sarcastic. My husband once had a co-worker who printed out every single email she received and filed it. Thank goodness for electronic searches! I hate filing!

Seriously, though, I am overwhelmed and a little saddened by how many good things are happening in our world that come across my Twitter feed so fast I can hardly give them more than a few seconds thought.

So, here is a poem I read this morning that is worth slowing down for.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


Just give it a minute...