Category Archives: Consumerism

DIGITAL MINIMALISM

Digital Minimalism is Cal Newport’s latest book.  I interviewed him on his previous book, Deep Work (see link below).  Both are absolutely terrific.  

I am gladly not on Twitter or Facebook, though some have tried to convince me otherwise.  I am on LinkedIn and obviously have some blogs.  These fit what I do. 

I’ve read several books and essays on the perils of social media.  All have been great, but Cal’s latest book and probably Neil Postman’s, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology are now my favorites.

Newport is hardly a Luddite, but he is a wise guide in helping us to think intentionally about how we spend our time.  If you look at Newport’s prodigious output of both popular and scholarly work, you know that he is practicing what he preaches.

Highly recommended!

Cal Newport: Focused Success in a Distracted World

HOW CLUTTERED IS YOUR HOUSE?

As I near sixty years old (surreal!) I am working to leave our earthly possessions in such a way as not to be a burden to our two sons.  To that end, I recently sold over 100 books from our somewhat large library (around 3000 volumes).  These are niche books that would not be of interest to them.  Fortunately, there are several books they want, but there are still many to get rid of.  I continue sift and make decisions and a new batch will be going out soon.  It is an ongoing battle as new review and interview copies keep coming from various publishers.  Getting rid of these books are “little deaths” and reminders of my own mortality, neither of which are cheery!  However, I don’t want leave David and Chris with unnecessary burdens.  The added motivation is that we can use the extra money now so it adds further incentive to be perpetually pitching.

A few days back I read about this study which adds some more motivation! (HT: Scot McKnight/Jesus Creed):

Imagine for a moment a team of anthropologists walking through your door, taking a look around, and settling in for a close observation of your possessions, how you interact with them, and what this means about American life.
 

That’s pretty much what happened to 32 middle-class families between 2001-2005. I recently came across the results of this anthropological study, published in 2012: Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors, by Jeanne E. Arnold, Anthony P. Graesch, Enzo Ragazzini, and Elinor Ochs. Together with a large research team, the authors analyzed and cataloged the visible possessions in each and every room of the 32 households—counting, documenting, examining, and coding artifacts in situ, in their place.

Devoting thousands of hours to data collection, they hoped to glean insights on the acquisition and organization of material artifacts, and on how families interacted with their possessions, and with one another. The results of the study are at once illuminating and devastating.

Their most striking findings concern the sheer magnitude of our material possessions.

Seventy-five percent of garages contain no cars. They’ve been repurposed to contain surplus stuff—unused furniture, bins containing countless forgotten-but-not-gone possessions. (The typical garage contains between 300-650 boxes; nearly 90 percent of garage square footage is being used for storage, rather than for cars).
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2017/08/reclaiming-life-at-home/#G1CodWjTVhUb76DY.99